I went to Hong Kong last weekend to get a first-hand look at the protests that are now commonly referred to as the “Umbrella Movement”. I went there believing that the protest movement had very little chance of achieving its main objective, which is to gain a ‘free and fair’ election process for Hong Kong, and came away with the same opinion.

The current protests are taking place in three parts of HK — in the streets around the central government offices in Admiralty (near Central on Hong Kong Island), along part of Nathan Road in Mong Kok (a major shopping area on the Kowloon side of HK), and Causeway Bay (a popular shopping/tourist area on Hong Kong Island). Protestors have blocked off some main streets using makeshift barricades and set up camp.

This must be one of the most peaceful mass protests ever. There are thousands of tents on the streets in the protest areas, but apart from numerous signs demanding “civil nomination” for political office and a few people giving speeches to small crowds at night-time, it doesn’t even seem like a protest. Rather, it seems as if a tent-dwelling community decided to make a home in the middle of a bustling metropolis. There are first-aid tents, covered study areas with many desks so that the students participating in the protest can keep up with their schoolwork, food and drink distribution points, and basic toilet/shower facilities. Also, the occupied areas are kept clean and tidy (there is no rubbish lying around). There was a police presence at Mong Kok (a few dozen uniformed police men and women were standing around the outside of the protest area looking bored), but not at Admiralty.

Here are some of the photos I took.

These photos show the tent cities:

These photos show what is now known as “Lennon Wall”. The wall is part of an elevated road in Admiralty and is coated with countless thousands of messages of support.

Finally, these photos show a first-aid tent, two covered study areas, and examples of the protestors’ artwork:

Overall, it appears to be business as usual in HK. Most people are going about their daily lives as if nothing out of the ordinary is going on, and Hong Kong has adjusted to having no vehicular access to the parts of the city occupied by the protestors. However, the situation could turn ugly, as it did for a few days in September, if the government makes another attempt to forcibly remove the protestors.

Although I couldn’t gauge the general level of support for the protest movement within the HK population, I suspect that most HK residents do not want to ‘rock the boat’ for the sake of greater political freedom. Furthermore, there is clearly some animosity towards the protestors on the part of HK people whose businesses have been disrupted by having some main streets blocked off. In one case, this animosity took the form of a high-volume tirade from a taxi driver when he was asked by my wife for his opinion about the protests.

Hong Kong’s rapidly-rising cost of living is one of the root causes of the discontent that led to the mass protests, but this problem would almost certainly not be addressed by ‘the people’ gaining more influence over who occupies the top political offices. The reason is that hardly anyone involved in the protest movement understands that the high cost of living is due to HK being crushed between the inflationary policies of the US and China.

Thanks to the HK dollar’s peg to the US dollar, HK’s monetary authority essentially follows the US Federal Reserve. This means that despite the steep upward trend in HK prices, interest rates are still being held near zero and the money supply is still being inflated at a brisk pace (it is up by 15% over the past 12 months). At the same time, as a result of the appreciation of the Yuan relative to the US$ and the large price rises in China’s major cities courtesy of rampant monetary inflation in that country, prices in HK still appear reasonable to the mainland Chinese who continue to flood into HK to spend money.

Hong Kong’s “inflation” problem looks destined to get worse over the coming 12 months, which could lead to more widespread support for the “Umbrella Movement”. But in the absence of a general understanding of the nature of the problem, taking a step in the direction of democracy is not going to help.

The gold mining sector entered crash mode last Wednesday (29th October). These types of events typically last 5-6 trading days, although they are sometimes a little shorter and sometimes a little longer. Based on the typical length of a multi-day crash the most likely time for a low is therefore this Tuesday (day 5) or Wednesday (day 6).

It is not uncommon for a multi-day crash to be interrupted by one ‘up day’. For example, a 6-day crash could entail three down days followed by an up day and then two more down days to complete the decline. Monday’s bounce in the gold-mining indices and ETFs is therefore not evidence that the crash is over. However, another advance of at least a few percent on Tuesday 4th November would be evidence that the crash is over.

Incredibly, both the Central Fund of Canada (CEF) and the Central Gold Trust (GTU) are now trading at discounts to their net asset values of almost 10%. This means that purchasing CEF near its current price is roughly equivalent to paying $1050/oz for gold and $14.50/oz for silver. The unusually large discounts at which these bullion funds are now trading is an indication that gold and silver are almost as out-of-favour as they ever get.

This topic was recently revisited at TSI due to the growing popularity of ETFs that are designed to move each day by 2 or 3 times the amount of a target index. My main point was/is that leveraged ETFs should only ever be used as short-term trading vehicles, because they tend to leak value over time. This is not a design flaw; it’s just something that anyone who trades these ETFs should be well aware of. Here is a slightly modified version of the most recent TSI coverage of the issue.

The crux of the matter is that leveraged ETFs are designed to move by 2 or 3 times the DAILY percentage changes of the target indexes. They are NOT designed to move by 2 or 3 times the percentage change of the target indexes over periods of longer than one day. Due to the effects of compounding, their percentage changes over periods of much longer than one day will usually be less — and sometimes substantially less — than 2-times (in the case of a 2X ETF) or 3-times (in the case of a 3X ETF) the percentage changes in the target indexes. For example, if you believe that the S&P500 Index is going to fall by 30% over the coming 12 months and to profit from this expected decline you purchase SDS, an ETF designed to move each day by 2-times the inverse of the SPX’s percentage change, then you will probably not make a 60% profit on this trade even if you turn out to be totally correct about the SPX’s performance. Instead, the amount of profit you make will be determined by the path taken by the SPX on its way to the 30% loss and will probably be a lot less than 60%.

The easiest way for me to explain how the relationship between the daily percentage change of an index and the daily percentage change of an associated leveraged ETF does not translate into a similar relationship over periods of longer than one day, is via some hypothetical examples that show how the math works. Here I go.

In the tables presented below, Index A is the target index (the index for which leveraged exposure is created) and 100 is the starting (Day 0) value for both the index and the associated leveraged ETF. I then move the index up on one day and down by the same amount on the next day, such that by Day 6 it is still at 100.

In the first table, Index A alternately moves up by 10 points and down by 10 points, ending Day 6 back where it started (at 100). The final column in this table shows the value of an ETF designed to move each day by twice the percentage change of Index A. Even though Index A ended the 6-day period unchanged, the 2X ETF based on Index A ended the period with a loss of 5.4%.

In the second table the volatility is ramped up. Instead of Index A alternately moving up and down by 10 points it experiences 20-point daily swings, but still ends Day 6 back where it started (at 100). Even though Index A ended the 6-day period unchanged, in this case the 2X ETF based on Index A ended the period with a loss of 18.7%.

In the third and final table I go back to the 10-point daily swings, but change the leverage to 3-times. In this case, the unchanged result for the index was accompanied by a loss of 15.5% for the leveraged ETF.

An implication of the above is that the greater the volatility of an index and the greater the leverage provided by an ETF linked to the index, the worse the likely performance of the leveraged ETF over extended periods. The worse, that is, relative to the performance superficially implied by the daily percentage change relationship between the index and the leveraged ETF. So, it is fair to say that leveraged ETFs are only suitable for short-term trades and that a trade should be very short-term if it involves a 3X ETF and/or a volatile market.

My final point is that it is possible to take advantage of the value leakage inherent in the design of leveraged ETFs by shorting them rather than buying them. For example, if you want to use a leveraged ETF to profit from an expected decline in the S&P500 Index, you will generally be better served by going short SSO (ProShares Ultra Long S&P500 Fund) than by going long SDS (ProShares Ultra Short S&P500 Fund). For another example, if you want to use a leveraged ETF to profit from an expected rise in junior gold-mining stocks and you plan to hold the position for more than a few weeks, you will generally be better served by going short JDST (Junior Gold Miners Index Bear 3X) than by going long JNUG (Junior Gold Miners Index Bull 3X).

TSI subscribers will soon receive an email alert regarding Thursday’s panic in the gold-mining sector, including brief thoughts on what it means for the days ahead and the actions that I am planning to take. The purpose of this post is to highlight the starkly contrasting long-term charts of the HUI and the US$ gold price. The relevant charts are displayed below.

There was already a dramatic difference between the HUI and gold charts prior to this week, but the price action of the past two trading days has magnified the difference. The HUI is now slightly below its 2004 and 2005 lows, and is within spitting distance of its 2008 crash low. At the same time, gold hasn’t even breached its lows of the past year and is trading about 220% above its 2004 low.

I think that the HUI’s position relative to gold equates to one of the most extreme market sentiment situations ever. It is, I think, right up there — in terms of magnitude, but at the opposite end of the sentiment spectrum — with the March-2000 upside blow-off in the NASDAQ.