A BULL MARKET???

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Bill Bonner

Yesterday, the Dow was up 90 points. But gold hit a new record high. So did the commodity index, the CRB.

What should you do with your money now?

Today, we take a break from our usual cogitations to bring you something useful. A suggestion.

"Sell the U.S.," we have said.

"Sell the U.K.," say our colleagues in London. The English have very similar problems to the United States - too much debt, too little profitable output, high costs, too little energy, too little food. What's more, the U.K. economy relies far more on the financial industry than America does.

But today we are feeling positive... helpful... almost earnest. We offer some buy-side advice.

Our colleague in Buenos Aires has persuaded us that Latin America is a buy. (Spanish speaking readers are invited to go directly to read his reports unblemished by our bad translations.)

The whole region is booming, says our man in South America. GDP growth is solid to spectacular. Currencies are rising. These economies are relatively unburdened with the high costs and legacy obligations of Britain and America. And they produce what the world seems to want most - food and energy .

"The economy of Peru is gathering momentum," writes Horacio Pozzo. "GDP growth reached 8.99% in 2007, with a strong growth in consumption (rising at a 7% annual rate) and with outstanding growth in capital investment, at around 23.4%.

"Wherever you look, the Peruvian economy is healthy - with a fiscal surplus of 2.6% of GDP and an external surplus of 1.5% of GDP, with record foreign currency reserves of $28 billion, unemployment of 6.9% and an inflation rate, which reached 3.9% last year, under control."

By almost every measure, in other words, Peru has a more solidly growing economy than either Britain or America.

In Brazil, meanwhile, consumer spending is rising too - up 5.5%, compared to an average of only 2.4% in the '90s. How come consumers are spending more? Simple... there's more money in the country and they have more jobs. Earnings have gone up 148% in just the last five years - to a per capital level of $2,794 in 2007. Unemployment has been going down too. It ran into the double digits in 2001 and 2003. Since then it's been coming down, to the lowest level in the last ten years in 2007 - at 7.4%.

Inflation is still running a bit hot in the Amazon. But the authorities are turning on the air conditioners. The key lending rate of Brazil's central bank is 11.25% and may go up, as officials try to hold down price increases. And unlike the U.S. president, Brazil's top man is actually becoming more popular - with approval ratings above 50% and rising.

Money is flowing to Brazil because the country is a major supplier of raw materials and soft commodities - the very things whose prices are rising so sharply. Just last week, for example, Brazilian suppliers got South Korean and Japanese buyers to accept a 63% increase in the price of iron ore. Wheat, of course, is off the charts.

But how do you take advantage of the boom in Latin America... and without getting whacked by a downturn in commodities? Here at The Daily Reckoning, we are suspicious of commodity prices. As soon as you notice a big spike up in a commodity - such as wheat, currently - you have to expect a big spike down. Commodity producers - with some major exceptions - react quickly to price increases. They produce enough to meet the demand... and then, typically, a lot more. Bust follows boom, sometimes so quickly that an investor has little time to get into position.

The 1970s, for example, were boom years for commodities, generally. But the price of sugar actually peaked out at 70 cents per pound in 1973 - at the very beginning of the boom. Marc Faber explains:

"Despite accelerating inflation rates, sugar thereafter failed to make a new high in the 1970s. After 1981, when interest rates fell, the price of sugar continued to decline and bottomed out at 2.5 cents per pound in 1985. And although interest rates continued to decline in the 1990s, sugar was still selling for just 5 cents a pound in 1999... very simply because supplies exceeded demand."

A boom in commodities is almost always followed by trouble. That's why our old friend Rick Rule says, "most people can't believe how cyclical commodity markets are." He goes on to say that in commodities, "either you are a contrarian or you are a victim."

But Horacio makes a suggestion for how to profit from Brazil's boom without getting on the wrong side of a commodity cycle.

TAM is an airline with nearly 50% of the domestic Brazilian market. Air transport in Brazil is rising at 10% per year. Yet, TAM sells at a price that is only 4 times earnings. And it has a price to book value of only 1.14.

Buy TAM, says Horacio.

Latin America is booming. And our colleagues in Buenos Aires, Argentina are well placed to help you profit from the many value opportunities south of the border. They have launched an email report service entitled Informe Moneyweek that covers both Latin American and international investment opportunities. It's written daily in Spanish by South American market experts, Horacio Pozzo and Paola Pecora. If this is something you would be interested in, I encourage you to click here ... and by the way, it's free!

*** London is a remarkable city.

We took the train out to Luton Airport this morning. Standing on the platform at London Bridge Station we watched the early morning trains come in. Out of them came the working classes, people who wear jeans and watch caps and start work early on construction sites, in restaurants and hotels, and in the few other manual jobs that remain in the city center. Later trains bring in a different class of worker... dressed in suits and ties, who walk across the bridge to the City, London's equivalent of Wall Street, and spend their days separating clients from their money. Millions of people come into the town center each day... "I did not think death had undone so many," remarked T.S. Eliot, watching them make their way over the Blackfriar's Bridge.

The center of town has become so expensive that few real Londoners can afford to live there. Instead, there are working foreigners, such as your editor, rich Arabs, Russians, French, Indians - all manner of flotsam and jetsam from the globalised, capitalist economy.

England has a tax rule, dating back some 200 years, that allows these foreigners to live in the U.K. and pay tax only on the money they earn in the country or bring into it. If, for example, a Russian energy billionaire chooses to live in London, his earnings from Russia are tax-free here. Naturally, this little feature... along with London's financial industry and its civilised, law-abiding society... attracts many of the world's rich and footloose.

Envy is a more potent emotion than the desire for wealth itself. Many people in the United Kingdom are annoyed that so many rich people live in their midst without paying taxes. "It's not fair," they say, "that we have to pay thousands in taxes on our meager salaries, while they earn billions and pay nothing." They have a point. It's not fair. But it might be smart. Clearly, the rich spread their money around. They fill the fancy restaurants... buy the expensive cars... go to the theatre. They buy property too... lifting the ceiling on the London housing market to the highest level in the world. They also spend enormous amounts of money in England's equivalent of Wall Street - the City.

They have money to manage and invest... they do mergers and acquisitions... the keep the clerks busy. They keep the high-priced lawyers busy... the dress-shop girls on alert... and the jewelry companies hoping for a big sale. (Last year, celebrating an important birthday, we bought Elizabeth a very little bauble at Tiffany's on Sloan Square. Now we are on the mailing list and treated as though we were an oil prince.)

Americans, of course, are in a class by themselves. Unlike the world's other peoples, the land of the free taxes its own on their worldwide wealth - no matter where they live or how long they've lived there. We have lived outside the United States for the last 12 years. Yet, every one of those years we filed our U.S. tax return and paid our taxes to the U.S. government - just as if we got something for it.

Curiously, this regime often works to Americans' interest. An American in Paris, for example, who earns his money in the United States, probably pays less in tax than any other group in the city. A special treaty between the United States and France permits U.S. citizens - and only U.S. citizens - to discharge their entire French tax obligation on U.S. source income simply by paying IRS what is owed.

But the non-U.S., "non-dom" foreigners in London have an even sweeter deal. ("Non doms" they are called... meaning, they are resident in the United Kingdom, but not domiciliary of Great Britain.) It was probably too good to last. Recently, the Labor government buckled to pressure from the voters and introduced a new tax on the "non-doms." Henceforth, the non-doms will have to pay an annual tax of 30,000 pounds - or about $55,000 - per year, for the privilege of living in the United Kingdom.

This amount is peanuts to the Russian billionaires, of course. But there are thousands of 'non-doms' to whom it is real money. The City has attracted analysts, fund managers, actuaries and mathematicians from all over the world. There are also large groups of foreigners who have made London their home because it is safer and nicer than where they came from. Whole industries have lodged themselves in London - largely because of the tax feature. A big part of the Greek shipping industry, for example, calls London home.

Now, many of these people say they are leaving. The Greeks say they are going back to Athens. The financial industry says it's going to Geneva. And all of a sudden, there's a gush of interest in Dubai.

We don't know how much effect this new tax will have. But it, along with a decline in the financial industry, makes it a poor time to buy property in London.

*** Speaking of Dubai, a full-page ad in a London newspaper announces a remarkable opportunity. "Dubai Property Investment Weekend," it proclaims.

"Learn about off-plan UAE property and return 40% to 50% of your investment per annum."

Hmmm... a yield of 40% - 50%? How is it possible? We don't know, but the ad tells us that we can invest 69,000 pounds and we'll get an annual return of 33,000.

Ha... ha... ha... ha... ha...

It's nice to see the markets functioning as they should, separating fools from their money. The actual return from an investment in Dubai property is more likely to be preceded by a minus sign. Colleague Kevin Kerr explains why:

"I haven't been there [to Dubai] before, and know very little about the country. I saw a special on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago while trapped on an airplane and saw how that Palm Island is completely sold out but there isn't a soul living there, it's almost deserted.

"I don't think I really grasped how insane it is until I saw some of these pictures and read about plans for a spaceport, yes a spaceport and a 100,000 employee Dubailand. I know this may seem stupid... But where do they get the water (hello, it's a desert), electricity, and everything else to support an infrastructure this big? Again, I know we are all aware of the building craze there, but I just didn't realise the scope until now."

REAL WEALTH

A New Bull Market Begins Now

By Andrew Mickey

It’s tough to believe, but there is still one bull market raging on.

With the U.S. markets closed, I was looking forward to taking a day to review some current positions—figuring out what’s going to recover, what’s not… and act accordingly. Even though the markets are down, this is still a time to sell the losers.

But after I woke up today at about 4:30am Pacific Time (I’m still getting my sleep schedule back to normal after coming back from Asia), the first thing I did was turn on my computer to see what was happening and found the markets in the red up and down the board.

Hong Kong was down 5.5%. Shanghai’s main index was struck with a 5.1% loss. India fell 7.7%. The DAX in Germany fell 4.2%. And the TSX Venture Exchange (where the most speculative, yet most highly profitable trades are made) was off 6.5% after the first hour of trading.

It was a bloodbath around the world and the U.S. missed it all…in a way. Today’s U.S. market closure was actually one of the key catalysts for today’s worldwide market turn down.

Despite what the news reports say about London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, the deepest pockets and most powerful money managers are mostly in the United States. And with a day off like today, the extra liquidity and buying demand from bottom fishing value traders just didn’t come through.

So, despite what has happened, it’s all just part of the (much needed) correction cycle we’re in now. But a correction, regardless of how bad it ends up being, is just that—a correction.

Over the past few weeks when it seemed like absolutely everything was getting crushed, there were some good sectors that kept on climbing without a hitch.

Practically everything in the agriculture sector has been on a tear. Gold has been dominating the headlines with its meteoric rise to more than $900 an ounce and then its subsequent pullback. But one of the investments that has survived the raging bear, is slowly gaining steam, and has quite a bit of upside is silver.

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That’s right, good old silver. Sure, it’s not as exciting as gold has been recently, but silver is a lot different. What makes silver different is that it’s a useful metal. It’s consumed. Demand comes from industrial sources and new supply is absolutely essential.

That’s why silver is really starting to get my interest. You see, silver is used for a lot of things. You can find silver in automobile engines, electrical appliances, security systems, telecommunication networks, mobile telephones, television receivers and computers.

Jet engines depend on silver-coated bearings for their performance and safety. All major jet engine manufacturers are required to use silver due to its unique metallic properties .

Bottom line, I want you to understand that silver is used in a lot of stuff… and we need more silver to make more of that stuff. It’s not like gold, which has extremely limited amount of uses.

Over the next two years, gold and silver will likely continue to run. Gold might more than double and make it to $2,000 (after many corrections along the way), but I think silver has a much better shot at tripling in value long before gold ever doubles from here.

It all comes down to utility value. Gold has value because the world arbitrarily affords it that value (just like we arbitrarily assign value to the dollar, euro, yen, etc.), but silver has utility value. It’s used in things. And that makes it a lot less susceptible to being the flavor of the month and “hot money” buying and selling like gold is.

So if you’re looking for a good commodity to buy for the next three months or more, silver is the place to be. Regrettably, all signs are pointing to continued weakness for base metals, oil, and energy over the next couple of months.

Good investing,

The Only Three Oil Investments You Should Make

by Andrew Mickey

It’s been an interesting year. The world economy is continuing to grow. The bull market in commodities is temporarily slowing down. More and more horrible announcements continue to come from the U.S. banks as they come clean. And oil prices have moved up 46%.

But as oil prices surge, leading oil companies haven’t enjoyed the run-up. Consider this: While oil prices climbed 46% this year, Exxon Mobil’s shareholders have only seen a 20% gain.

Considering Exxon has more than 2 million shareholders, that’s a lot of people that have completely missed the run-up.

But there is plenty of money to be made in the oil markets. Just take a look at what other oil and gas stocks have done in just the past year:

- Fox Petroleum (FXPE:OTC BB) has climbed 220%
- Contango Oil and Gas (MCF:NYSE) is up 160%
- Evolution Petroleum (EVP:AMEX) more than doubled from its lows

Even the $40 billion offshore oil rig-operating behemoth Transocean (RIG:NYSE) has added 80% in value over the past year.

Clearly, there are some big opportunities in oil stocks. But Exxon Mobil, Cevron, BP and the other large oil companies aren’t going to be where you’ll get market-beating returns. You have to go one step further.

Oil Catch-Up Investment #1: With oil hovering around the $90 mark, many different types of oil are extremely valuable. Heavy oil that costs $40 a barrel to produce profitably, oil sands (which could take as much as $60 a barrel to produce on a large scale) and deep-sea oil that is miles underneath the ocean’s surface makes sense economically.

Currently, billions of dollars are being poured into the areas because the oil majors are betting big that these new sources of oil will provide enough oil to offset declining production from more conventional sources.

As a result, anyone that can help these companies get these types of oil out of the ground and to market has years of growth ahead of it. The oil service sector still offers plenty of undervalued opportunities and specialty firms that focus on these areas will be solid investments.

More specifically, in the oil sands region of Canada, the owners of the new pipelines as well as local natural gas producers will play an extremely profitable role in getting this barely economical source of oil to market.

Oil Catch-Up Investment #2:

The other big problem for oil companies is that they simply can’t find much oil. Of course, there are quite a few companies that help oil companies out here, but the most important ones are the seismic data and imaging companies.

With oil prices still near all-time highs, the Peak Oil theorists are back out in force, screaming, “The world is running out of oil! The world is running out of oil!”

It’s not. However, the world is running out of easy-to-find, easy-to-recover oil. And those companies that can keep costs low and help oil exploration companies increase their odds of hitting crude when they drill are highly valuable partners.

Oil Catch-Up Investment #3:

Finally, the potentially most lucrative oil investment that will allow you to get back some of those missed returns is the emerging oil producers. Too many investors consider these small companies in far off places to be highly risky.

However, it’s that misguided attitude that has helped keep these stocks undervalued. After all, a barrel of oil in the United States costs $90 and a barrel of oil in Thailand is worth $90. There’s no difference. Oil companies don’t care. Your house’s heating system doesn’t know the difference. Cars don’t either. Why should you?

There’s no reason to. That’s why when Christian Dehaemer told me about a small oil company that he recently uncovered, I could instantly see the potential. It’s not the type of investment opportunity for everyone, but if you’d like to learn more.

Sticking to these three different subsectors of the oil industry should help keep you enjoying the remainder of the oil boom. The way it’s looking, we could be a couple of years away from the end of the run and, as we’ve explored here before, wind, solar, ethanol… are going to provide the solution.

Good investing,