2021-05-31

Speculation Case Study: Chasing a Mining Discovery Breakout

If you're quick, one speculations strategy is to chase discovery breakouts. These do not always pan out, but often times the market doesn't fully price in a big discovery right away. Momentum is a strategy not simply because of human psychology, but because investors usually do not accurately price in all available information right away. With topping/declining stocks, they take the initial bad news as a one-off. With positive changes, they view teh good news in isolation.

For traders more on the daytrading end of the spectrum, a good drill result can produce several days of substantial gains. I will usually buy these as fast as possible and not worry about pullbacks. I won't do any research beyond checking if the result is overhyped.

Here's an example that I bought last week on news: Northstar.

I bought slightly below the horizontal on the first day of the breakout. As long as it stays above, I will see what the news flow brings.

In this case, the hit doesn't seem as good as the market's reaction, but what intrigues me is the company has employed GoldSpot (my top holding). The latter found eight drilling targets for Northstar on the property they're currently drilling. If I'm right about GoldSpot's technology, then companies using it should experience better than average drill results. On net, speculative trades should pay off more than they lose in a bull market.

2021-05-30

Taleb and Roubini to Speak at Coingeek Conference

Bitcoin sceptics Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Nicholas Taleb join speakers’ roster at CoinGeek Zurich
Discussion topics will include but not limited to:

What currently drives market value of BTC vs what should drive real value of a digital asset

Does the market correctly consider the real utility of a blockchain or its native token(s)

How should actual utility influence the market price of a blockchain’s token

How should scalability of a blockchain influence the market’s valuation

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: “I had hoped bitcoin would be a currency that could be transacted with but BTC has turned out to be too volatile and thus a speculative tool, so I look forward to sharing my thoughts and discussing further on this roundtable panel.”

Nouriel Roubini: “I think calling cryptocurrencies a currency is a misnomer. The question is if Bitcoin is an asset and if cryptocurrencies can have real utility? I am happy to discuss this further look forward to discussing this at CoinGeek Conference.”

I am surprised to see Taleb using the trading symbol, BTC, instead of Bitcoin. Taleb had said in February that he was selling his BTC because of the volatility, and he has called it an open Ponzi. He also recently had a spat with BTC holders over whether it was following the Bitcoin white paper or not.

Bitcoiner Max Keiser Debates with Nassim Taleb Regarding Bitcoin White Paper

The crux of the debate between BTC and other chains such as the Bitcoin fork BSV, is about what the digital money should do. BTC limits the number of transactions via the size of its blocks and thereby moved towards a "digital gold" model where the coin has a very high value. BSV moved in the opposite direction towards unlimited blocksize. BTC is the digital equivalent of gold because it is very slow and expensive to transact. BSV is akin more to high-frequency trading, aside from potentially saving businesses and consumers billions in fees collected by payment networks such as Mastercard and Visa, it also allows for future applications in data markets and new economies.

I discussed why I believe BSV's model is the future in: Using Bitcoin for Censorship Resistant Communication

My most recent post on Bitcoin, more BTC price focused is here: BTC Waterfall Decline Approaches

As I expected would happen with a BTC sell-off, BSV went down with it. It bounced off long-term support, but I believe that will break when BTC heads towards $20,000 and potentially lower prices.

I see long-term support around $50 if BTC goes into a major bear market. I will be keeping an eye on the BSVBTC ratio if that happens. For now, BSV has not broken down relative to BTC. Volume is collapsing in the crypto market though...
If this ratio is rising in a bear market, I will be aggressively buying. If it dips along with BTC, I will probably wait longer because it will indicate the whole market is getting blown out. I expect 90 to 99 percent of the crypto market will disappear in major bear market. The survivors will eventually generate returns that will mirror the gains in BTC and Ethereum over the past decade. The corrollary is the doctom bubble versus the survivors such as Amazon and startups such as Google, Facebook and Netflix.

Finally, BTC looks like it could be ready to collapse as soon as this week given the drop in volume:

2021-05-29

SARS2 Coronavirus Is Man-made

Daily Mail:COVID-19 'has NO credible natural ancestor' and WAS created by Chinese scientists who then tried to cover their tracks with 'retro-engineering' to make it seem like it naturally arose from bats, explosive new study claims
While analyzing COVID-19 samples last year in an attempt to create a vaccine, Dalgleish and Sørensen discovered 'unique fingerprints' in the virus that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory.

They said they tried to publish their findings but were rejected by major scientific journals which were at the time resolute that the virus jumped naturally from bats or other animals to humans.

Even when former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove spoke out publicly saying the scientists' theory should be investigated, the idea was dismissed as 'fake news.'

Over a year later, leading academics, politicians and the media finally flipped, and have begun to contemplate the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China - a lab where experiments included manipulating viruses to increase their infectiousness in order to study their potential effects on humans.

USG funded, China made.

Go Woke, Get Killed: American Progressives Cancelled Sir Alexander Fleming

America is ruled by a primitive ruling class whose ideology bears more resemblance to a Stone Age tribe or a cargo cult. In their language, "science" takes the place of a deity. The result is a perfectly good treatment for SARS2 is rejected in favor of killing people on ventilators and waiting for an experimental vaccine that has a far higher death rate than other vaccines that were pulled from the market, such as for the swine flu outbreak in the 1970s.

ZH: Is Ivermectin The New Penicillin?

As those Indian States using Ivermectin continue to diverge in cases and deaths from those states that forbid it, the natural experiment illustrates the power of Ivermectin decisively.

Cases in Delhi, where Ivermectin was begun on April 20, dropped from 28,395 to just 2,260 on May 22. This represents an astounding 92% drop. Likewise, cases in Uttar Pradesh have dropped from 37,944 on April 24 to 5,964 on May 22 - a decline of 84%.

Delhi and Uttar Pradesh followed the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) guidance published April 20, 2021, which called for dosing of .2 mg per kg of Ivermectin per body weight for three days. This amounts to 15 mg per day for a 150-pound person or 18 mg per day for a 200-pound individual.

The other three Indian states that adopted it are all down as well. Goa is down from 4,195 to 1,647, Uttarakhand is down from 9,624 to 2,903, and Karnataka is down from 50,112 to 31,183. Goa adopted a pre-emptive policy of mass Ivermectin prevention for the entire adult population over age 18 at a dose of 12 mg daily for five days.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu announced on May 14 they were outlawing Ivermectin in favor of the politically correct Remdesivir. As a result, Tamil Nadu's cases are up in the same time frame from April 20 to May 22 - 10,986 to 35,873 - more than a tripling.

2021-05-28

America Is "Less Equal" in 2021 Because It Is More Diverse

The vast majority of complaints about racism in America are the result of differing outcomes in a free market. At the individual level, America is about as free and equal as any nation that has ever existed, arguably more so than any that has ever existed. At the group level however, genetics, culture or some unknown factors drive variances between peoples. This is logical if you consider two groups, white and black. Now assume whites like playing baseball, hockey and basketball in that order of preference, and blacks like playing basketball, baseball and hockey in that order of preference. Even if we ignore how strongly they prefer each of these sports, logically you would predict the professional basketball league would have more blacks than in the general population and hockey more whites. If there are more blacks in say the basketball league, there will be proportionally less in other sports simply because the black athletes are in the NBA. The smaller the minority group and the stronger its preferences, talents or what have you, the more likely they will produce some lopsided effect at the group level, even if an individual black who is great at hockey has no obstacles to playing professional hockey, and vice versa for a white basketball player. Be it genetics or culture, there are persistent trends in European ethnic groups alone. The difference between America before 1965 and after 1965 is that the disparity between European ethnic cohorts was smaller than the disparity between global cohorts. As America becomes more diverse, it ipso facto becomes less equal if you're measuring at the group level because introducing more groups and more distant groups at that, will naturally produce more divergent outcomes.

This slide from the article below is one of the best examples.

The article goes on to explain that when data scientists control for factors such as cognitive ability, the disparities disappear. Talent is not evenly distributed among people. Some families have a lot of doctors, some a lot of lawyers, some a lot of athletes and so on. In America, if you have the talent and desire to become a doctor, you can become a doctor. No one will stop you. At the individual level, the U.S. is truly the land of opportunity and that should be celebrated. Instead, people who do not understand diversity or cannot handle actual diversity, actual diverse outcomes (ironically the people who scream loudest for diversity...) and alowed to destroy critical American foundations such as public education, law and justice in the name of "anti-racism."

Families are related. In small nation, say Denmark, most of the population is fairly related, that is they are all extended family members once you go back several generations into the past. When you move these "families," what are also called nations, into a single political and economic unit, it produces similar divergences you will see if you hop on a plane and travel to Denmark, then Beijing, then New Dehli. A single political unit such as the United States can shave off some of the variety and homogenize the people to an extent, maybe they're all eating at the same McDonald's, but it cannot erase hundreds of years of selective mating and cultural development.

Zach's Newsletter: Exposing the group disparities = discrimination fallacy

By using group level inequality to justify individual discrimination, the reality in America is white and Asian males are probably the two most discriminated groups in the country. This is already producing a backlash with increased prevalence of white identity movements and white nationalism. It is awakening (another irony of the Woke) a shared white identity that didn't exist in the "non-diverse" America that was filled with French, Dutch, Germans, Italians, Polish, Irish....in many towns children learned their ethnicity's language at the school for their ethnic group, they attended a church that catered to their ethnic group. Towns would have a Polish, Italian, French, Irish and Spanish Catholic church, the numbers and specifics depending on the local populations. People couldn't easily tell your ethnicity by looking at you, but they could tell as soon as you told them your name. In some ways, pre-1965 America, certainly pre-1945 America, was far more diverse in the literal sense of the word. Mass communications and public education, along with a major assimilation effort and a near ban on immigration, produced a more homogenous society by the 1960s. Right when America might have celebrated its success, or rather perhaps when it thought too highly of its ability to integrate diverse populatons, it decided to destroy the ethnic, religious and cultural homogeneity of the population in favor of diversity. Well, actually it didn't. When the 1965 immigration act was debated, its proponents said it wouldn't change the demographics of the nation that had produced the largest middle class in the world, a free and democratic society.

The American government (USG), schools, corporations and other institutions that pursue diversity initiatives on the basis of racial proportions in the general population are creating a racial Bed of Procrustes, lopping off talents because their group is overrepresented, while stretching mediocore talents into positions beyond their ability. It is a pernicious ideology, an inversion of Nazism. It's adherents are spreading a vile lie straight from the depths of Hell, a Satanic message of hate that is inverted into moral superiority and seemingly a surface message of love and tolerance, making it difficult to stamp out in a nation that has abandoned God. It is impossible to predict the future, but I'm rather certain that America will either turn back to Christianity or it will break apart, perhaps into racialized and ethnic states (consider racial voting patterns), be it peacefully, chaotic or violent. I do not see an easy way to unbrainwash the Woke masses who have been programmed to see racism in everything for their entire life. What you're seeing in the streets of America and in the corporate boardrooms is the result of people 30 years-old rising into positions of power. They were fed are far less evil message 20 years ago and 10 years ago. Violent mobs burning down cities now, peopel are being taught to hate themselves because of their race now, what is coming in 20 years? Whatever is coming, America's Apocalypto approaches.

Secession Talk Gets Serious: Oregon Counties Want Out

Insider: 'Greater Idaho' took one step closer to being a real thing this week, as 5 more counties have voted to secede from liberal Oregon in hopes of joining conservative Idaho.
Seven rural Oregon counties have already voted in favor of an effort aimed at leaving Oregon and becoming part of Idaho and organizers of the Greater Idaho movement say more counties will soon have the option on the ballot.

"We want out from underneath Oregon's governance and go underneath Idaho's governance, which we tend to match up better with, as far as our values go," the group's president, Mike McCarter, told Insider. "Now for 20 years plus, we've been trying to change the makeup and improve the makeup of the Oregon legislature but when you haven't got the vote, there's not much you can do about it."

The ballot measures called on officials in each county to start considering the move and are the first step of adding the region to Idaho.

Secession is going to become a huge issue in the rising generation. The odds of states breaking apart is very high. The potential for a total breakup are also high if decentralization and steps such as letting state shift their borders is prevented. Secession on some level is an outlet during periods of negative mood. Voters in Oregon leaving for Idaho, for example, will be busied with the political change if they move into Idaho. Should their frustrations be intensified under the current framework, they will look for solutions at the national level, be it secession or voting for nationalists.

The Fact Checkers Are Lying Again: Gasoline Demand is Still Down

Here's gasoline demand. It is lower than it was in 2019. Everyone expected a surge, a boom reopening because of stimulus. Gasoline demand should be higher than normal. Reality check: gasoline demand is below 2019 levels.
Stimulus does create artificial demand. Stimulus is also keeping truckers at home, delaying fuel shipments. Loockdowns disrupted supply chains. Democrat energy policy, including Biden killing the Keystone pipeline on day one, increases speculation that future oil prices will be higher.

On the side of the above story was this more objective news about rising car prices:

Link to story: Cars Are About to Get a Lot More Expensive
The price of everything that goes into a vehicle is going up. Raw materials — from the steel used for bodies, gear parts and frames to the plastic that winds up in bumpers and doors trims — account for a big portion of manufacturing costs. These are only growing. Add to that labor, logistics, the pressure to invest in new technologies and creeping inflation, and carmakers are seeing a very different landscape from the relatively profit-friendly market they have enjoyed over the past few months.

Part of what has been helping the auto industry is its scaled-back production. Despite all the complaining about shortages of various parts, including chips, carmakers have kept their shareholders happy. They’ve been smart and uncharacteristically nimble about leveraging broader economic imbalances. Despite plant shutdowns, manufacturers across the globe posted blowout results in the first quarter. They've made fewer, arguably better, vehicles and have pushed margins higher.

But when carmakers start consistently talking about lower production, it should be a worrying sign. In the latest set of results, auto giants including the world’s largest, Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co., said they will produce far fewer vehicles this year because of a worsening chip shortage. The shortfall alone is expected to result in almost 4 million fewer units, or 5% of estimated annual sales this year.

People who do not know how an economy works, just screwed up an economy for 12 months straight. It could take several years for the economy to return to normal without anymore of their bright ideas, but instead they're coming up with new harebrained schemes by the day. This is not going to end well for the American people. No matter what happens, inflation or deflation, it's going to be a very painful few years.

2021-05-27

Yuan Can Go Up and Down Says Govt as Yuan Threatens Breakout

We've seen this movie before. When the yuan starts threatening the export economy, when the yuan becomes an ever larger pin approaching the credit bubble, the government reminds speculators that the yuan can go up and down because of market forces. In other words, the yuan is about get market forced by the central bank.

iFeng: 不要赌人民币升贬值!重磅会议罕见示警,不能用汇率升值抵消大宗商品涨价

After the RMB exchange rate becomes more market-oriented, the rise and fall of the exchange rate is the norm. Enterprises should establish a "risk-neutral" concept to avoid deviating from risk-neutral "foreign exchange speculation" behavior.

On May 27, the seventh working conference of the national foreign exchange market self-discipline mechanism was held in Beijing. Statements on exchange rates at this meeting are relatively rare, which has aroused great attention from the market. The meeting held that in the future, there will be many market and policy factors that affect the exchange rate. The RMB may appreciate or depreciate. No one can accurately predict exchange rate movements. The exchange rate cannot be used as a tool, neither can be used to depreciate to stimulate exports, nor can it be used to appreciate to offset the impact of rising commodity prices. The key is to manage expectations and resolutely crack down on all kinds of malicious manipulation of the market and malicious creation of unilateral expectations.

...The meeting concluded that the current foreign exchange market is generally balanced. In the future, there are many market and policy factors that affect the exchange rate. The RMB may appreciate or depreciate. No one can accurately predict exchange rate movements. Whether it is short-term or medium-to-long term, the uncertainty of exchange rates is inevitable, and two-way fluctuations are the norm. Governments, institutions or individuals must avoid being misled by predictions. A managed floating exchange rate system based on market supply and demand, adjusted with reference to a basket of currencies, is suitable for China's national conditions and should be adhered to for a long time. Under this exchange rate system, the exchange rate cannot be used as a tool, neither can be used to depreciate to stimulate exports, nor can it be used to appreciate to offset the impact of rising commodity prices. The key is to manage expectations and resolutely crack down on all kinds of malicious manipulation of the market and malicious creation of unilateral expectations.

It can be seen that the above statement responds to the recent market views that the RMB exchange rate will appreciate in the medium and long term, and the central bank will abandon the exchange rate target, and once again emphasize that the RMB exchange rate is based on market supply and demand.

Amazing! Do you know how central bankers create the illusion of control? With interest rates, they follow the markey up and down. With the exchange rate, China annouces that appreciation will end right when the chart tells them a reversal is due.
Good Spot for Yuan Reversal

Osino Turning Up

Looks primed for a breakout. Solid drill results announced today. The all-time high is 1.65 per share. Trades under ticker OSIIF on the US OTC.

Under the Radar First Pour

This is a stock I have followed for some time and it is now coming up on production in Q3 2021. With every mining stock there is the caveat of bad management and bad luck wrecking a perfectly profitable mine, but...if they execute on their plan and if new highs beget new highs for gold in the next 3 to 5 years, then I think this stock could very well trade for $1 or more. I have been aggressively buying here.

For traders, the short-term peak will likely come when they announce their first pour.

Other first pour stocks I have bought coming into this year, or during this year, are as follows:

Dacian

I was unlucky and bought days before the raise, but I like the risk/reward setup. It looks like a bottom formed over the past 2 years with "weak" hands having sold already to "strong" hands who have an average price that is below 50 cents (over the past year, most volume in the mid 30-cent range). 

There is risk of a spike down that marks capitulation because there is no support below. That will flush all the remaining weak hands that bought over the past 2 years. It would hopefully be a V-shape that takes DCN back into this range. A breakdown accompanied by negative news means the bottom is somewhere lower, with no support since everyone holding DCN share will be underwater at that point.

The bull case is the company raised $40 million, has a $230 million market cap and will produce 150,000 oz per year. It goes without saying that management has destroyed value to this point and one must assume more destruction is coming with this crew, but if gold can hit a new high, they'd be pulling in about $120 million gross profit over their AISC. Beyond and they will be pulling in substantial cash. This stock is extremely levered to the gold price.

2021-05-25

China's Carbon Neutral Plan Has Northeast Flummoxed, One City Shuts Off All Street Lights

iFeng: “一刀切”切痛北方重碳省 业内人士:要想完成指标,恐怕只有停产 ("One size fits all" painful to the industry insiders of the Northern Heavy Carbon Province: To complete the target, I am afraid that the only way to stop production)
At present, the oil market is on the rise, and all regions are producing at full capacity. But a coal-to-liquid company in the north was deserted, and the leaders and employees were sad, and even sent a letter to the head office-requesting to stop production .

"Three times a week, the development and reform, energy, statistics and other departments have repeatedly requested and repeatedly monitored that our total energy consumption in the first quarter of this year was reduced by 50,000 tons of standard coal year-on-year. However, in the first quarter of last year, affected by the epidemic, the company basically had no production. The consumption base is small, and it is difficult to complete the task of reducing consumption." Zhang Heng (a pseudonym), the general manager of the coal-to-liquid branch, said, "Some cadres bluntly said,'It is impossible to complete it, it can be stopped.'"

The experience of this company is not alone. During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, some provinces and regions failed to complete the national energy consumption "dual control" indicator task, and some were interviewed and notified by the National Development and Reform Commission because of their low rankings. Since the second half of 2020, many provinces and autonomous regions have issued a series of policies to fully deploy the "14th Five-Year Plan" and "dual control" of energy consumption in 2021. Some have decomposed energy consumption "dual control" task indicators step by step from provinces to cities and counties, to enterprises, and the relevant departments and enterprises feel more pressure.

Compared with the suspension of production, the more serious is the withdrawal. Recently, 11 companies in an industrial park in the north were included in the withdrawal because the submerged arc furnace was below 25,000 kVA. "Some companies have not even violated any laws and regulations. They are forced to withdraw only in order to meet the requirements of "dual control" of energy consumption." The cadre in charge of related work in the industrial park said, "11 companies are facing withdrawing, and behind it is the employment problem of at least 1,000 people. The park and enterprises are in a difficult situation, and there is currently no compensation plan."

The tentacles of "dual control" also extend to daily life. In the past few days, Ms. Wang, who lives in a county in Northeast China, was afraid to go out at night because the local government requested that “all street lights in the county be turned off all day”, “building lighting, business and business plaque lighting, LED screens and street lights The light box is closed all day." Ms. Wang was very helpless: “It’s not safe to drive and walk. The night economy that has finally developed has also stopped. There are fewer people doing square dancing and exercising. It’s really bad.”

The reporter encountered the situation of elevator shutdown many times during the interview. A five-storey government building originally had 4 elevators in operation. In order to reduce consumption, all the elevators were shut down. Cadres and employees climbed the stairs all day, and had to endure the building's "centralized power outage for one hour" at noon. A cadre bluntly said: "The'dual control' of energy consumption is a good thing, but if even basic work and life are disturbed, problems will arise."

It's a long article, this is only a small bit of it. You can get the gist of the story though: officials don't know how to hit carbon targets and they're shutting down the economy in the face of what seem like impossible targets.

In the Aftermath

I was long before and sold a few months back. Now I'm long again. There is a lot of political risk given properties in Chile and Peru, but as long as there's no shock news that takes the stock down in one day, I will hold the shares down to 40 cents Canadian. Upside is it goes back to over $1 and far higher if silver breaks $30 an ounce.

2021-05-24

Return to Hong Kong: Snack Empire

Corporate: Snack Empire

Shihlin Taiwan Snacks Homepage

A bull case: Snack Empire

Chart: Based Charts

GoldSpot a Triple from October

I posted on it here: Hits the Spot
Don't think I've mentioned this stock before: Goldspot (SPOT.V, GDDCF). They use BigData to find drill targets for explorers and miners. They are paid consulting fees and also take royalties on discoveries. I have a sizable position in this one. If their recent earnings annualize out, the P/E is below three, assuming no growth. This could easily trade north of a dollar if the market gains confidence in the earnings and growth.
GooldSpot has tripled from where it was when I posted. They have a royalty on New Found Gold's Linear property. NFG keeps making bonanza hits, and made another on Friday. Canadian markets are closed for Victoria Day, but the U.S. traded shares in both stocks are up 15 percent or more in early trading.
GoldSpot isn't dirt cheap anymore and I hesistate to chase charts that go vertical, but I think it has much farther to go in the years ahead.

2021-05-23

BTC Waterfall Decline Approaches

My first target for this BTC bear market is $20,000, with a firmer bottom in the range of $12,500 to $14,000. There was support at the $30,000 level, but I think this is a bigger move. BTC has already failed at former support,now resistance at $42k.

I am not shorting BTC. I'm more interested in BTC secondary plays such as MSTR and RIOT, but what I'm really looking at is BTC as a thermometer for speculation and what that implies for stocks. Tertiary plays such as Nvidia and beyond in the Nasdaq, such as Apple and Amazon.

On to the charts. Here's BTC. Everyone was focused on $30k support for good reason: the vast majority of BTC buyers via the market this past year have bought above $30k. Volume in Q1 was 267 million and Q2 is already 159 million BTC. That makes for 426 million transactions above $30k. I have to go back to the 2017 Q4 peak in BTC to accumualte enough volume to exceed what has traded since December. More than half of BTC buyers over the past 3 years paid more than $30k.

Both the chart pattern price support levels are simialr to the 2017 top.
The 2017 peak was in the context of a bull market in financial assets. BTC have never existed during a broad bear market. If BTC can go lower, let's look at the volume profile for a clue. Below I show the 3-, 5-, and 7-year time frames.
Lo and behold, the volume profile corroborates the green horizontal I have on the chart. There is strong support between the green and violet horizontals.
Summary

$30k was a tradable short-term support level

$20k is firm support for a major correction

$12.5k to $15k is support for a BTC bear market

Lower is possible in a broad bear market accompanied by a financial crisis on par with 2008 and March 2020. Perhaps the $1000 area could be tested in a deflationary panic. It would depend entirely on whether the government devalues the currency and if competing coins displace BTC as "digital gold." It depends on if the Tether bubble pops. See: Did Unbacked Tether Creation Manipulate Bitcoin Prices?

I hold BSV, a Bitcoin fork that makes micropayments possible. It can replace both Ethereum and BTC. Unlike other coins endlessly hyped as speculative trading vehicles, BSV is more preferred by developers building applications. (BSV is not listed on many exchanges because it calls itself Bitcoin and the exchanges claim this would confuse investors.) It is implementing the full vision of what digital currency should be. I'm speculating on its survivorship and emergence as the superior blockchain. I think it will get crushed along with everything if BTC collapses, but will add more on the way down.

Finally, here is BTC inverted. It looks like the mining charts I've been buying the past 2 years. If you think about the volume profile in reverse, there's lots of support down to $30k (up on the inverse chart). After that, it's a straight shot to $20k. There is some support there, but it isn't deep because after that, the well of buyers came in around $15 or lower.

The real way to acquire "diamond hands" is by paying a low price. The volume profile says the real diamond hands won't be tested until around $15k.

Update: Here's BSV. Unfortunately, falling BTC will take out the uptrend and probably send BSV down to around $50.

2021-05-21

Good Spot for Yuan Reversal

Bloomberg: China Should Let Yuan Gain to Offset Price Surge: PBOC Official
“As an important consumer of commodities globally, China is inevitably impacted by international market prices through imports,” Lyu Jinzhong, director of the research and statistics department at the central bank’s Shanghai branch, wrote in an article published Friday by China Finance, a magazine run by the PBOC.

His comments came as China grapples with the fastest rise in producer prices in more than three years, with the government rolling out more measures this week to check speculation in the commodity markets and quell inflation fears. The surge in factory-gate prices is unlikely to lead to any significant spike in retail inflation, given the divergence in consumer prices that have seen only modest gains, according to Lyu.

Also notable is China bashing Bitcoin mining, one of ways Chinese can avoid capital controls.
Update: Today comes this headline: On Friday A PBOC Official Called For A Stronger Yuan; One Day Later His Article Was Deleted
On Sunday, People’s Bank of China Vice Governor Liu Guoqiang appeared to counter that view, saying the exchange rate will be kept at “basically stable” levels. Local media also chimed in with a front-page commentary, saying the exchange-rate mechanism is expected to stay stable for some time.

A stronger yuan would cut the cost of imports, such as commodities, which have been a major component of increasing prices. But the strength of the yuan means additional gains may fuel speculation that authorities are letting go of the currency -- thereby spurring traders to bet on further appreciation. Such one-way bets have long been resisted by the PBOC, while a too-strong yuan would also hurt the nation’s global competitiveness by making exports more expensive.

If Beijing was serious about letting go of the yuan or making it more international, it would ease capital controls. So far, there’s little sign of that. A botched mid-2015 move to let the market have a greater role in setting the yuan spooked global investors, eventually pushing Beijing to adopt its current framework: welcoming inflows of overseas capital while limiting the outflow of domestic money.

There's nothing current about it. It's same policy in place since the hard peg was eased in 2005. Their attempt to open up in 2015 caused them to crackdown on outflows. They have moved backward in the midst of deflationary pressure from the U.S. dollar, from the global financial system creaking under its natural debt limit. Today, their economy is barely growing above stall speed adjusted for credit growth and risk of upsetting the credit market. A drop in exports caused by an appreciating yuan might be enough to tip the economy back towards a crisis. Forex reserves are already below 10 percent of M2 and any appreciation in the yuan only increases the impact of a given outflow of U.S. dollars.

2021-05-18

Currency Market Back in Focus

Commodity currencies have broen out versus USD, but commodity importing, export nations such as China, Japan and Korea sit at major suppot levels o reversed alreadt (KRW). The euro is the strongest of the bunch and behind makign the dollar look weaker than it might be. We'll know very soon with a lot of breakouts or reversals coming.
Here we go.

2021-05-17

Lumber-Gold Ratio and New Home Sales

One shows gold/lumber, the other lumber/gold.

Adios Mi General: New Wave of Socialism Could Destroy Chile's Wealth

ZH: Chile Assets Dive After Radicals Win Election Mandate To Overhaul 'Free Market Friendly' Constitution
In what's being widely described as a shock loss after this weekend's historic election to determine who will draft the country's new constitution, traditional parties including President Sebastián Piñera’s ruling center-right coalition Chile Vamos got clobbered, seeing their parliamentary seats and influence greatly diminish in favor of both independent, hard-left and radical candidates Sunday night.

With over 90% of the votes counted by Monday afternoon, Pinera’s coalition won a mere one-fifth of the constitutional assembly's 155 seats (at 37 seats), while traditional center-left parties picked up only 25 seats, leaving the lion's share to "radical blocs" that include communists and independent leftists that are bent on implementing sweeping changes to Chile's constitution which dates back to Gen. Pinochet's military rule. Radical re-drafting of the constitution was a central demand of the 2019 protests triggered by high living costs and rampant inequality (which famously, it should be remembered, was initially sparked by a $0.04 metro fare price hike given long boiling anger among the working class).

BBC tallies that now with more than 98% of the votes counted, "independent candidates had secured 48 seats, the left 28, the centre-left 25, and the right-wing coalition 37." And an additional 17 seats will go to representatives of indigenous groups, the latter which were a driving force in the protests and unrest of 2019.

Given the ruling government failed utterly in its battle to secure the critical one-third of seats needed to block major changes, a radical new constitution is all but assured, with the new constitution expected to head to public vote by the first half of next year (after delegates will spend at least nine months drafting it).

The Chile ETF failed out of the monster wedge pattern.
USDCLP doesn't look helpful yet, but if Chile goes down the tubes, the currency will start driving the ETF.
Peru has elections next month. The country is headed in the same direction. The chart of the currency implies trouble, but the ETF could go either way thanks to resource prices. Veezuela is a stark reminder that the most resource endowned nations can still go straight down the tubes with a socialist government.

Submerging Markets

Brazil, China and South Korean currencies all reversing vs USD at important levels.
A breakdown in any of these currencies might be enough to carry emerrging market ETFs through suppoort and into a larger correction.