Mailbag Friday

Let’s have a light Friday. [The Rude Awakening] June 23, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( Mailbag Friday - Diet Pepsi over coffee first thing in the morning? - Reading the charts gets easier with practice. - Who’s buying gold? External Advertisement [New Breakthrough "Living Software" Has Been... Ukraine's "Secret Weapon" Against Russia]( The Washington Post Reports: "It's a big reason David is beating Goliath..." The Wall Street Journal Reports: "it's a technical revolution." Jeff Bezos Said: "It's in the realm of science fiction." [Early investors can reap 5,633% gains on the small company revolutionizing warfare ]( [Click Here To Learn More]( [Sean Ring] SEAN RING Happy Friday from sunny Northern Italy! I haven’t done a mailbag edition in a while, so I thought I’d give us an easier Friday read. Thanks for writing such lovely notes. And thank you for asking such relevant and intelligent questions. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the passengers on the ill-fated Titan. I don’t care how rich, famous, stupid, intelligent, tall, short, fat, or thin you are. No one deserves to die in such a way. The vitriol coming from Leftists on Twitter is [tasteless]( [immoral]( and [beyond the pale](. But that’s why I love free speech so much: we now know who these people are and can choose to disassociate entirely from them. I wouldn’t have got on that contraption to begin with. I’d rather jump out of a plane and not have my parachute open. I’d have a heart attack, give up the ghost, and not feel the splat. But just because I wouldn’t get in a little sub doesn’t mean no one should explore the deep. [James Cameron, the great filmmaker, probed the Challenger Deep of the Marianas Trench over a decade ago.]( If you get the engineering right and don’t ignore safety protocols, souls far braver than mine can and should discover more about the 70% of the planet we’ve barely explored. As for the five souls who lost their lives attempting to explore the Titanic, may God bless them and keep them. And now, to happier times in the mailbag. Lovely Sentiments Good morning, Since opting in for several subscriptions at Paradigm, I receive - seemingly - countless emails. Rude Awakening is one of the daily articles that I genuinely look forward to as I drink my Diet Pepsi (I don't drink coffee) first thing in the morning. Sean's article on 6/6/23 left me in stitches. I love his writing style, but most of all, his insight. Keep it coming! Kindly, Rob G ------- I enjoy and look forward to Sean's writing about anything in the Rude Awakening. He gives colorful side info about the world, politics, finances, world travel illustrations, etc but never gets lost in these stories. He makes them relevant to financial and/or political issues to illustrate his points which I love because, as an old lady and novel investor, sometimes straight technical info hurts my brain and loses me somewhere along the way. I remember and can understand issues when they are relevant to everyday life issues, inflation, Biden et al trashing this country and our economy. His wit, knowledge, and insight are evident and enjoyable. Linda L. ------- Hi Sean. I've loved maps from an early age--as you probably did also. The John Wesley Powell map of arid regions of the USA had some good insight. Next time you are in Fredericksburg with your parents, you'll be at 98.9 degrees longitude--very close to Wesley's arid border. Being that close to the border must mean wet and dry periods alternate. We're emerging from a few years with 5 to 10" of annual rainfall into a wetter time. The dry times kill off plants we didn't realize were non-native. Natives adapt and come back when the rains return. Thanks for the thought-provoking map. Y'all be well. Gary H. Thanks for the kind words, Rob, Linda, and Gary. It makes the work worth doing. I will endeavor to exceed your expectations over the coming years. [Urgent Notice From Paradigm CIO Zach Scheidt!]( [Click here to learn more]( Hi, Zach Scheidt here… I’m the Chief Income Officer at Paradigm Press. With inflation raging (and showing no signs of coming to an end any time soon), almost everyone in America is feeling the pain in a big way. Which is why, several months ago, I set out on a big mission… my goal was to create a [complete, step-by-step plan to surviving and beating inflation]( one that anyone could take advantage of. Today, after hundreds of hours of research, I’m revealing all of my findings. [Simply click here now to see how to survive America’s deadly inflation crisis](. [Click Here To Learn More]( Eating My Own Cooking Dear Sean, I’ve always thought that the rule that advisors can’t invest in their own recommendations is the dumbest thing I have ever heard (after globalism, climate change, and woke, of course! Best regards, Martin Thanks for writing, Martin. To be fair, advisors used to “front run” their picks. That means advisors would buy ABC stock and then recommend it in their newsletters. The bidding onslaught would come upon publication, and the advisor would make more money than his subscribers. So the SEC banned it altogether. Now, it’s ok to “eat your own cooking” as a publisher, as long as you give your subscribers enough time to get in first. Jim T.’s Big Three Sean, Not sure why, but your charts spoke to me today for the first time. Now that I am on board and am understanding the relevance of the 50-day and 200-day MA as well as your selection of securities/assets, it occurs to me that you probably know what most of those other chart terms mean, e.g., Bollinger Bands. So, as a suggestion, it would be a bonus for at least one of your readers, if you would add a bonus chart each month and explain one of the other technical chart terms for us novices. Also, the more I buy into JR’s dystopian future (I’m re-reading his books and just got onto The Big Drop again), I’m curious if you think you will fare better in Italy as opposed to those in other countries, particularly USA. Further, are there better places to be than Italy or USA? First, I’m so glad about the charts. An old friend of mine once said, “You need to read 1,000 charts before you start to get it.” Repetition is critical to seeing things. And, yes, I’ll try to explain technical, fundamental, and sentiment indicators every so often in the Rude. I usually avoid such things because I don’t want anyone to fall asleep in their coffee! Second, I wouldn’t live here unless I thought I’d be better off. Please read this [Morning Reckoning]( piece I wrote in January. I follow all the advice I give to you. For instance, thanks to prudent accountancy and Italy’s laws, I lowered my effective tax rate to 7.35% for 2022. (If I were more careful about my receipts, it’d probably even be lower.) As far as I’m concerned, that’s a 32% gain over what I’d be paying in the States. Also, I’m currently bidding for a house that, while big, is not more than [three times my annual income](. So my mortgage - which will be tiny anyway - is no more costly than an extravagant dinner. Those two linked articles above got some of the best feedback I’ve ever received. I hope you enjoy them and get immediately actionable information from them. Are there better places? I’m sure there are, but it would depend on your circumstances. (But there’s no better cuisine than Italian cuisine. Sorry about that!) Is there any way of knowing if the USG is currently buying more gold? Seems to be a common belief that China and Russia are or have been in the last 20 years or so. What about the US? This may be tough to see on a cellphone, but central bank gold buying is way up (the maroon tops of the columns). [SJN] Credit: [GoldHub]( By country, it looks like this: [SJN] Credit: [GoldHub]( If that’s difficult to read, Singapore, China, Turkey, and India were the four largest buyers. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, and Russia were the four largest sellers. As for the US, it doesn’t need to buy much. This is the official reserve count according to [gold.org]( [SJN] I have been looking at BLS CPI-U historical adjustments/factors and wondering how inflation adjusts prices of different assets such as gold, soybeans, and home prices. While I can easily compute current and future values using CPl-U, I have a nagging feeling that there must be something better that I should use rather than CPI-U to get results for comparing past and future. Question: Are there more specific or better indices that I might use to perform inflation adjustment calculations? In general, I tend to view inflation from my birthday or from my wedding date as that is what I can best relate to. Thanks, Jim T. Jim, thanks for your questions. I love to read them and look forward to answering them. As for this last one, I’d check out [ShadowStats]( by John Williams. He uses the old methodology for calculating inflation. I bet it’ll be closer to what you’re calculating than the official statistics. Bernie Made Off With the Money… Sean, I was passing on to my wife the information of how and when the debt ceiling was created, and how none of it has ever been actually paid off, just rolled over and over when it occurred to me. The US Government makes Bernie Madoff and Charles Ponzi look like a couple of pikers! Richard S. Richard, thanks for writing in. You’re in good company! I think that thought is occurring to many Americans right now. And Finally… First, thank you for all you do!!! I have a question: When discussing the economy, whether as to where it is and/or where it is going….. Why is the metric GO not mentioned in the discussions put forth? Regards Peter A. Peter, thank you for reading! This is a great question. GO, or Gross Output, is Mark Skousen’s favorite economy-measuring metric. I will elaborate on it in Monday’s Rude. I hope you don’t mind waiting for the weekend, but I must research first. Wrap Up I love reading your stuff. Please write to feedback@rudeawakening.info whenever you feel like it. I believe I’ve answered all your questions so far. If I’ve missed you, it’s entirely by accident. So please resend your question, comment, or issue, and I’ll get to it right away. In the meantime, have a wonderful and restful weekend! All the best, [Sean Ring] Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening Twitter: [@seaniechaos]( In Case You Missed It… Tech Rally Stalls; Food Rally Begins [Sean Ring] SEAN RING Good morning from a warm, sunny Piedmont. I booked my holiday to Sicily in two weeks, so I’m in an excellent mood. I’ll be writing the Rude from there. I love my holidays, but they also give me much to write about. It’d be a shame to waste those thoughts on a beach without writing them down. After that, I’ll be off to New York City to teach for two weeks. It’ll be my last teaching assignment in a slow summer. The banks were reluctant to book too much as the bailout situation was unclear until late this spring. Finally, two weeks after I return from NYC, I’ll be off on an excursion with my in-laws to Barcelona, Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Pam’s family is getting a version of The Grand Tour because Pam and one of her sisters live in Europe. And I’ll still be writing from all those cities, as well. It’s a packed summer, for sure. But before I start sounding like a travel writer, let’s look at what’s happening in the markets. Some of it may have passed you by. I certainly missed it. Today, we’ll look at tech, resources, and Bitcoin. Tech Rally Slows… Finally, Mr. Market seems to be cooling on AI. Don’t get me wrong; I love ChatGPT and all its offshoots. It makes my research infinitely easier. But is it ready for its close-up? Perhaps not. The Nasdaq has rocketed over the last two months, pulling up the rest of the equities complex. [SJN] But in the last few days, this has stalled: [SJN] Does this mean it’s time to throw in the towel on the Nasdaq? No, of course not. But we may be seeing a shift out of the tech sector and into another. But before I go there, let’s check Bitcoin. …But Bitcoin Rallies Hard In the last week, Bitcoin is up nearly 20% against the dollar: [SJN] Besides those who abhor the Fed’s policies, the only thing I can see that’s lifted BTC is that BlackRock successfully applied to the SEC for a Bitcoin ETF. [SJN] On the daily chart above, that rally was furious. Before it, there was nothing but a downtrend. So while the Nasdaq has faltered, Bitcoin has done the opposite. For now, the positive correlation between the two is no more. [11 Words Biden HATES]( [Click here to learn more]( There’s a message hiding in plain sight on the front of this $1 dollar bill… A message so critical… Former CIA and Pentagon advisor, Jim Rickards, recorded [this urgent new message](. The simple, 11-word message is the most important piece of information on EVERY single dollar you own… And Joe Biden wants to completely CHANGE it! [Click here NOW to learn the truth about this urgent threat to your freedoms](. [Click Here To Learn More]( …And Food Goes on a Tear My friend and Paradigm colleague Alan Knuckman discussed corn on yesterday's editorial call. I hadn’t been watching, but my goodness, has that rally been pronounced or what? [SJN] From [Reuters]( The U.S. Department of Agriculture cut its corn and soy crop ratings more than expected on Tuesday, including steep drops in top-producing states Iowa and Illinois, as a deepening drought stressed crops in the heart of the Midwest farm belt. Selected states showed a decline in "good-to-excellent" corn of 6%, with Iowa and Illinois in the worst condition, according to a note from commodities research firm Hightower. Not surprisingly, "poor-to-very poor" crops increased, with the biggest jump in Illinois, it said. This comes as concern is also mounting about crops elsewhere, including Europe. It continued: In the United States, the Biden administration plans to increase the amount of biofuels that oil refiners must blend into the nation's fuel mix over the next three years, but the plan includes lower mandates for corn-based ethanol than it had initially proposed, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Turning food into fuel in the name of the environment is lunacy. It makes both food and fuel more expensive. The food part is the worst because people starve on the back of these stupid policies. [Former Dubya speechwriter and]( Atlantic]( David Frum wrote]( (bolds mine): For decades, the U.S. government has, at great expense, encouraged farmers to grow more corn so that it can be turned into ethanol, a gasoline additive. Ethanol makers receive all kinds of grants and subsidies. Federal regulations require ethanol to be blended into gasoline, creating a giant industry that would not exist without large subsidies and imperious mandates. America’s largest ethanol company earned annual revenues of $8 billion pre-pandemic. Demand from the ethanol industry, in turn, bids up the price of corn and the income of those who farm it. … Converting corn into fuel has never made economic sense. It happens only because of a mass of federal regulations and subsidies that began during the Carter administration and were widened and deepened in 2005 and 2007. You can read the gruesome details in this Atlantic article from 2019. But if the rules are complicated, the results are not. From 2001 to 2005, the United States’ share of world wheat exports averaged 25 percent; since the new ethanol rules were adopted in the first decade of this century, the U.S. share has tumbled by half, to about 13 percent. Ethanol was historically justified as an energy-independence strategy. Campaigning in Iowa for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007, Barack Obama declared that ethanol “ultimately helps our national security, because right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth.” Obama had plenty of practice defending ethanol: He’d entered federal politics as a senator from Illinois, the nation’s second-largest corn producer after Iowa. But whatever the (slim-to-none) merits of that argument in 2007, its merits are zero in 2022, when the United States has become the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. And though ethanol may have some small environmental advantages over gasoline, those arguable benefits are nullified by ethanol’s terrible toll on world food output. Let’s move on to another staple food. How about this wheat chart? [SJN] Wheat has been rallying this entire month, but it really went hyperbolic last week. Again, this is an entirely unexpected turnaround from the formerly prevailing downtrend. Again, from Reuters: Germany's 2023 wheat crop of all types will fall 2.9% on the year to 21.87 million metric tons, the country's association of farm cooperatives said in its latest harvest estimate on Wednesday, as plants suffered from dry, hot weather. The European Union's crop monitoring service MARS on Monday reduced nearly all its average yield forecasts for this year's grain and oilseed crops in the bloc, citing adverse weather conditions. Soybeans have also had a rip-roaring rally: [pub] From [AGCanada.com]( CBOT November soybeans were 34-1/4 cents higher at $13.77 a bushel after rising to $13.78, the highest peak for the new-crop contract since March 8. “Given the situation around the Corn Belt, it now seems highly unlikely that the USDA’s yield estimate will be achievable,” Summit Commodity Brokerage said in a research note. “If we stay dry, it will be hard for this market to do anything but work higher.” To summarize, staple foods like corn, wheat, and soybeans are rallying hard. I don’t know how long this can last, but it may be a while. Wrap Up Nazzie is stalling, though that may not last. Bitcoin is ripping it up, trading at over $30,000. Corn, wheat, and soybeans, all important staple foods, are rallying hard on bad weather, worse soil, and idiotic government policies. When any opportunity closes down, another opens up. Have a great day! All the best, [Sean Ring] Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening Twitter: [@seaniechaos]( [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2023 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your Rude Awakening e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Rude Awakening, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@rudeawakening.info. This address is for feedback only. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, [contact us here]( or call (844)-731-0984. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. 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