Precious metals expert Michael Ballanger reflects on how events of 2016 affected the markets, and lays out his strategy for 2017, which includes diamonds and uranium.
One of the most bothersome peccadillos of the advisory community, be it emanations from home computer blogs or the Ivory Towers of Wall Street, is the annoying tendency to accentuate good calls and understate bad ones.
Confusion, diffusion, and illusion . . .
Take Dennis Gartman. The Zerohedge community is constantly laughing at his mistakes while ridiculing him for every single trading error and roasting his every slip-up by taking his trading comments out of context. Let us not forget that The Gartman Letter is a commodity trading letter and his subscribers are trained to look at a “long-term trade,” as one that lasts as long as a) it is working, b) markets are open, or c) until one has to go to the men’s room. So when he says that he is “getting very short of stocks,” it means that he is already short and probably out either by way of stop-loss or by way of a decent “trade” going into the close.
And yet, as DG gets pilloried every time he opens his mouth, I find him extremely articulate and, in fact and fiction, quite entertaining as he adds a touch of wit and self-deprecation to the world of TV financial news coverage and is a far more ingratiating person to whom to listen rather than Canadian Shark Tank megalomaniac money guy Kevin O’Leary or the vast majority of the gold bugs.
In other words, it is all relative. When I listen to podcasts or interviews or commentaries from industry “experts,” I always try to cut through those peccadillos that are derived from a facial feature or a method of speech or an overdone make-up job …read more