This blog post is a slightly modified excerpt from a recent TSI commentary.

“If you believe in the thesis that world GDP will continue to expand and that population growth will continue, then you should own natural resources. New people who are born will want to eat, drive, and build houses. This trend offers long-term support for natural resources.”

The above is a comment by Rick Rule in an article titled “Are the Worst of Times Yet to Come?“. I consider Rick Rule to be a brilliant investor in natural-resource companies and agree with his investment strategy. I also agree with everything in the afore-linked article EXCEPT the above comment. If it is true that the prices of natural resources are supported by economic and population growth, then why is it that world population and world GDP have grown relentlessly over the past 200 years and yet over that entire period the real prices of most commodities have been in downward trends?

The fact is that economic growth causes prices, including the prices of most natural resources, to become LOWER, not higher. Real growth involves producing more with less. That’s why the fastest-growing industries generally have downward-trending product prices. However, the downward trend in prices that would otherwise occur due to real growth can be counteracted by monetary inflation and political intervention, and these days that’s exactly what happens most of the time. These days, monetary inflation causes prices (prices in general, not all prices) to have an upward bias even during periods of economic progress — periods when prices, on average, should be trending downward. This is because in addition to reducing the purchasing power of money, an effect of monetary inflation is to make the economy less efficient by distorting relative price signals. Political intervention also puts upward pressure on prices by placing obstacles in the way of more efficient production.

Consequently, genuine economic growth is most definitely not an ingredient for large rises in natural-resource prices. Instead, two of the three main ingredients are monetary inflation and an increase in politically-motivated/directed spending.

The third main ingredient is valuation. The relative valuations of different assets and commodities will have a big influence on which prices are affected the most by the current cycle’s monetary inflation. In particular, for commodities to be major beneficiaries of monetary inflation, commodity prices should be low relative to the prices of equities and bonds. According to the following weekly chart, commodity prices (as represented by the CCI) are currently near a 10-year low relative to the S&P500 Index, which is certainly low enough to enable a multi-quarter period of relative strength.

From the Stock market section of the Weekly Market Update posted on 19th October, under the heading “What to do”:

“We have no idea what anyone else should do, apart from maintain a substantial cash reserve. Having exited all stock-market-related put options last week, the short-term plan for our own account is to begin averaging into January-2016 SSO (ProShares Ultra S&P500) put options following some additional rebounding activity over the next few weeks. We might also average into the unleveraged, actively-managed bear funds previously mentioned at TSI (BEARX and HDGE).

This plan assumes that a multi-week low was put in place last week. If this assumption is wrong and it turns out that the initial decline from the September peak is not yet over, then we will take no action. We will not enter bearish speculations when the market is in the midst of a sharp decline.“

I’m posting this brief comment to advise that if the US stock market opens strongly today (Tuesday) then I will probably take an initial position in the aforementioned SSO put options or some other puts. I want some coverage in case the rebound fails sooner than anticipated.

I also want to make readers aware that Almaden Minerals (AAU) and True Gold Mining (TGM.V) issued bullish press releases earlier today. The news will be discussed, as usual, in the next Weekly Update.

Despite the fact that the NASDAQ Composite and NYSE Composite Indices tested Wednesday’s intra-day lows on Thursday 16th October, the number of individual NYSE and NASDAQ stocks making new 12-month lows collapsed on Thursday. The relevant charts are shown below. Across the NASDAQ and NYSE markets, the number of new lows fell from around 660 on Wednesday to around 200 on Thursday. This has bullish implications with regard to the next few weeks.

If you are in the position of needing a market to do something specific in the short term, such as rally or decline by a certain amount, then you are positioned wrongly. You should be positioned in such a way that you can watch the day-to-day price moves with equanimity. Furthermore, unless you make a living from scalping small profits from intra-day fluctuations, you should NOT watch the markets closely during the trading day. No good will come of it, because closely watching the intra-day price action will increase the risk that you will make a spur-of-the-moment decision based primarily on emotion. That is, it will increase the risk of making a mistake.

Before a market in which you have a financial interest opens for trading you should know the prices at which you would be a buyer and the prices at which you would be a seller. You should therefore be able to place any orders prior to the open. You can then check back later — ideally, after the market has closed — to see what happened and which, if any, of your orders were filled.

I feel fortunate to be separated by 12 hours from the stock markets in which most of my stocks trade (the US and Canadian stock markets). This separation removes any temptation that I might otherwise feel to watch the intra-day trading action, because it means that I am usually asleep during the bulk of the trading day.

On a typical day (night) I check the futures markets and company-specific news well before the start of the North American trading session and decide what, if any, new orders are appropriate. Most orders are placed prior to the open, although occasionally I watch the first few minutes of trading before placing an order. I then usually check back after about one hour to see what’s happening before switching off for the night. By the time I switch back on the markets are closed and I can calmly (most of the time) assess the day’s outcome and start thinking about what new orders make sense for the next day.

On a related matter, the majority of the orders I place are either priced well above the market (for sell orders) or well below the market (for buy orders), with the bid and offer prices usually determined by a combination of valuation and chart-related support/resistance. As a result, my orders sometimes sit around for at least a few weeks before getting filled and sometimes don’t get filled at all. I never, ever, use market orders.