"While some might mistakenly consider value investing a mechanical tool for identifying bargains, it is actually a comprehensive investment philosophy that emphasizes the need to perform in-depth fundamental analysis, pursue long-term investment results, limit risk, and resist crowd psychology." --Seth Klarman

TRUMP BUMP? DUMP! (November 20, 2024): On November 5, 2024, the U.S. held elections in which the Presidential winner was a Republican, while the Senate and House of Representatives ended up with majority Republican results. Before these elections, we already had by far the heaviest insider selling in the history of the U.S. stock market, the highest-ever valuations for most large-cap U.S. stocks, the highest-ever percentage of total U.S. assets invested in U.S. stocks, the highest-ever ratios of U.S. stock-market capitalization to U.S. GDP, and similar rare extremes which were above the 99th percentile.

There was a brief euphoric bounce to even higher levels which mostly peaked in the morning of Monday, November 11, 2024, less than one week following the elections. When a very overpriced asset temporarily becomes even more expensive, due primarily to emotional excitement, then this is historically an ideal selling opportunity. It works the opposite way too: when a very undervalued asset temporarily becomes even cheaper mainly for psychological reasons, this is one of the best times to make a purchase.

Gold mining and silver mining shares consistently complete tops and bottoms prior to most other stocks doing likewise.

During the 1999-2003 global equity bear market, HUI which is a fund of unhedged gold mining shares completed its bottom on November 15-16, 2000. This was almost two years before many other equities and their funds had bottomed on or near October 10, 2002. During the 2007-2009 bear market, gold mining shares were similarly among the earliest stock funds to complete their lowest points at or near the open on October 24, 2008. The S&P 500 didn't fall to its lowest point of 666.79 until March 6, 2009. It works the other way also: gold mining shares topped out in August 2020, well over a year before the Russell 2000 had completed its highest point in November 2021 and several years prior to the recent potential zenith for the S&P 500 Index.

Both GDX and GDXJ recently completed multi-year highs during the pre-market session on October 23, 2024. This pullback is likely to lead to losses for most other stock funds. Just as in past decades, GDX and GDXJ will be among the earliest exchange-traded funds to complete their lowest points for the cycle, perhaps in the first half of 2025. My guess is that both GDX and GDXJ will fall to bottoms which are between their early autumn 2022 lows and their early autumn 2023 lows. If this guess is wrong then it will probably be that one or both of these drop below their September 2022 bottoms to five-year nadirs. Assets including QQQ will probably fall to their lowest levels of 2025 several weeks to a few months afterward, possibly with QQQ dropping below 300, with QQQ thereafter enjoying a multi-month rebound which could carry it near 400 before resuming its bear market which might eventually end after many ups and downs around 2027 with QQQ below 100.

Emerging markets have been creating unheralded opportunities which might bottom around the spring and/or summer of 2025.

Emerging-market valuations relative to earnings are near their lowest-ever points of the past several decades, only briefly approached or surpassed during previous U.S. stock-market bubbles. Investors have become overly enamored with large-cap U.S. stocks and have therefore mostly sold their holdings in most other parts of the world to chase after dangerously overpriced U.S. shares. This has already created compelling opportunities. My main reason for waiting before buying is that the first major downward phase for large-cap U.S. shares will usually spill over into nearly all other stocks and corporate bonds in most of the world and in most sectors.

There are many possible worthwhile buying opportunities for emerging-market stock funds which may bottom roughly a half year from now near multi-year lows. Exchange-traded funds worth considering for purchase at that time may include EWZ, EWZS, and BRF (Brazil), VNM (Vietnam), EWW (Mexico), GXG (Colombia), IDX (Indonesia), and EPHE (Philippines).

Undervalued assets including TLT, FXY, and PALL have fallen to historic bottoms and have been forming several higher lows as is typical of the early stages of all true multi-year bull markets.

Just over one year ago, TLT fell to its lowest intraday point (81.92 at 5:40 a.m. on October 23, 2023) since June 15, 2004. Since then it has made several higher lows under 90. In July 2024 the Japanese yen fell to its lowest point since 1986 versus the U.S. dollar which can be purchased via the exchange-traded fund FXY. PALL, a fund of palladium bullion, dropped to 76.49 at 8:30:48 a.m. on August 5, 2024, thereby touching its lowest level since May 30, 2017, and since then forming several higher lows including 84.31 at 8:54:24 a.m. on November 14, 2024. The traders' commitments for all of the above three assets are demonstrating aggressive commercial accumulation which should lead to significantly higher prices over the next few years.

The U.S. dollar index has been rallying since September 27, 2024, which is generally negative for most stocks.

On September 27, 2024, the U.S. dollar index dropped to 100.514, its lowest point since July 20, 2023, and completing a two-year pullback which had begun from a two-decade top on September 28, 2022. Since then the U.S. dollar has been very strong with almost no media coverage. A powerful greenback is almost always followed by declines for most stocks and corporate bonds. Whenever the U.S. dollar index reaches an important peak and begins to form lower highs, which will likely occur sometime during 2025, this will signal that it is time to move progressively onto the long side with most equities and their funds.

We have achieved new all-time extremes between the 99th and 100th percentile for a wide range of valuation categories which have mostly been tracked for decades or longer.

The following charts highlight how large-cap U.S. stocks have been trading near all-time overvaluations even if you go all the way back to the founding of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange in 1790:

The CNN Fear & Greed Index reached 76 for one of the few times in its history:

Compared with the rest of the world, U.S. stocks haven't been more overpriced at least since 1950:

Investors have the most optimistic expectations for their U.S. stock investments since this survey began in 1987:

Using S&P 500 price to sales or price to book, we approached new all-time extremes for both in November 2024:

A measure of sentiment based upon quantitative indicators rather than a survey has shown the greatest-ever anticipation of future percentage gains for large-cap U.S. stocks:

2007 was the last year when the spreads between high-yield corporate bonds and U.S. Treasuries of identical maturities were as low as they have been recently:

Mark Hulbert has quantitatively compiled a list of indicators which have been used for decades to gauge the U.S. stock market's level of over- or undervaluation using percentile readings:

Investors currently have far too much of their money in U.S. stocks and not nearly enough in U.S. Treasuries:

Investors are shunning U.S. Treasuries and bank CDs paying 4.5% while putting money into QQQ paying 0.57%, because, just as with any historic bubble peak, they're certain they can "easily" make several times the difference with capital gains:

The bottom line: Investors years from now will look back at the current time and wonder why they weren't selling U.S. stocks much more aggressively, just as Warren Buffett and the top executives of many of the world's biggest companies have been doing during the past several months near all high points. Instead, investors have made all-time record deposits into large-cap U.S. stocks and have never been more overconfident about achieving future gains. The internet bubble ended with QQQ dropping 83.6% from its intraday peak of March 10, 2000 to its intraday bottom of October 10, 2002, 31 months later. However long the current bear market lasts won't be known except in hindsight, but now is an even more critical time to go against the crowd.

Disclosure of current holdings:

Below is my current asset allocation as of 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 20, 2024. Each position is listed as its percentage of my total liquid net worth.

I computed the exact totals for each position and grouped these according to sector.

The order is as follows: 1) U.S. government bonds; 2) shorts; 3) bear funds; 4) precious metals; 5) coins; 6) miscellaneous securities.

VMFXX/TIAA(Traditional)/bank CDs/FZDXX/FZFXX/SPRXX/SPAXX/BPRXX/Savings/Checking long: 37.36%;

17-Week/52-Week/26-Week/13-Week/2-Year/8-Week/3-Year/5,10-Year TIPS/4-Week/42-Day long/20-Year: 23.44%;

I Bonds long: 11.38%;

TLT long: 10.83%;

PMM long: 0.01%;

XLK short (all shorts are once again unhedged): 35.59%;

QQQ short: 25.58%;

SMH short: 1.50%;

AAPL short: 0.15%;

GDXJ short: 0.13%;

GDX short: 0.01%;

SARK long: 0.58%;

PSQ long: 0.04%;

PALL long: 1.49%;

Gold/silver/platinum coins: 7.71%;

FXY long: 0.80%.

"It's very hard to go against the crowd. Even if you've done it most of your life, it still jolts you." --David Dreman

WINTER FOLLOWS AUTUMN (June 30, 2024): Many investors have embraced the mythical "soft landing" scenario. Every multi-year bull market in U.S. history, with steady growth and low inflation, eventually becomes overheated with above-average inflation, just as every moderate spring season is followed eventually by a hot humid summer. This overheating is followed by a choppy, dramatic slowdown during which inflation unevenly declines while GDP growth decelerates and eventually goes negative. It is similar to summer being followed by autumn. Then, just as autumn must lead into winter, negative GDP growth--also known as a recession--is accompanied by an equity bear market. As often as this scenario has repeated itself in the United States since the 1700s, many people today are convinced that we're going to magically transition from colorful falling leaves directly into blossoming flowers and warming temperatures.

The weather doesn't work that way and neither does the economy or the stock market. The Russell 2000 and many other consistently reliable leading indicators have been in bear markets since 2021, with numerous lower highs along the way. After the leaves have reached peak color in November, the next month isn't going to be April or May. Instead we get December, and usually an even colder January, and then a volatile February. Winter is approaching. You can dream of spring eventually returning, but to expect it to happen immediately after autumn is fantasy.

Top corporate insiders have been selling at an all-time record pace, not only in the popular AI shares but in numerous absurdly overpriced U.S. large-cap stocks.

We can spend hours or days debating whether or not Nvidia is overvalued, but let's instead look at a more clear and revealing instance of the current U.S. large-cap bubble. For four decades, Costco (COST) has been growing its profits at 10% or 11% per year, with its price-earnings ratio fluctuating from high single digits to low double digits. Recently Costco has sported a price-earnings ratio of 53.8. There are many possibilities about what the future might bring, but Costco growing its profits at a 50% annualized pace will never happen even if we are invaded from other galaxies and the invaders are eager to buy all of their supplies at Costco. If you didn't flunk kindergarten then you can calculate how much Costco's stock price has to drop to return to its long-term valuation.

Each time that analysts cheer allegedly "great" earnings from any company, the stock price usually immediately surges higher. Within a day or two the top executives usually make massive sales, taking advantage of the irrationally high valuations. Either 1) these insiders are correct by doing their heaviest selling in history by a wide margin, often selling years' worth of accumulated shares; or 2) the least-knowledgeable investors are correct by making all-time record inflows into the U.S. stock market. I know which side I'm betting on.

While top corporate insiders have done their heaviest selling in history during 2024, ordinary investors have done their most aggressive buying in history. Which group is right? History shows us the clear answer.

Ordinary households recently set a new all-time record allocation to the U.S. stock market, about four times their lows from the early 1980s and significantly higher than at the 2000 internet bubble top:

Overconfident investors have also set new records by piling into leveraged long U.S. equity funds, while bailing out of leveraged short funds in their certainty that a significant percentage loss for the U.S. stock market won't happen any time soon:

Other assets including residential real estate have become dangerously overpriced, although they are generally not as wildly overvalued as large-cap U.S. stocks.

Real estate worldwide had been reasonably priced for decades until 1997. Since then, we have experienced housing bubbles worldwide to varying degrees, with the U.S. reaching a bubble peak in 2005-2006 and an even higher bubble zenith in 2022-2024. Here is a chart of U.S. real residential housing prices from January 1976 through June 2024:

While U.S. houses are about twice as high relative to household incomes as compared with their long-term averages, Canadian real estate in early 2022 had reached triple fair value. Whenever any asset is fundamentally very under- or overvalued it must experience a volatile price adjustment in order to return to fair value.

The primary argument for owning any cryptocurrency is that a famous person also owns it and endorses it (and we would be shocked, shocked to hear that such a person is being paid for doing so).

With cryptocurrencies we don't even know what fair value is, because there is no proven history. Bitcoin is the oldest cryptocurrency which was invented in 2009, when the previous severe bear market was ending. Therefore, we have no clue as to how these will perform in another true bear market. It is like buying a rare tropical plant, putting it in your back yard in a place where it goes below freezing numerous times each winter, and assuming that it will thrive. It might be in wonderful shape by August or September, but it may not be in prime condition several months later. Why anyone would want to own such an unproven asset is beyond my limited ability of comprehension.

High-yield corporate bonds have mostly been approaching their lowest-ever spreads relative to U.S. Treasuries.

There are times when U.S. high-yield corporate bonds are at incredibly undervalued levels, such as they had been in years including 1932-1933 and 2008-2009, and there are periods like 2024 when their spreads to U.S. Treasuries have approached or set all-time record lows. Investors love to buy near all-time highs because they perceive elevated prices as proof of any asset's superiority, whereas they end up selling in disappointment near multi-year bottoms since all they hear about is how prices will keep on dropping.

A surprisingly diverse range of assets have quietly become absurdly undervalued, including some major emerging-market equity bourses.

While the price surges for stocks, real estate, cryptocurrencies, and high-yield corporate bonds have resulted in unsustainably overpriced levels being achieved, there are numerous assets which are trading well below fair value. Most emerging-market securities have been trading near their lowest relative valuations in years or decades, with stocks in countries including Brazil, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines being especially worthwhile bargains. Because the early stages of any severe bear market tend to be accompanied by a high degree of correlation, these bargains will probably become even better bargains during the upcoming year which makes it important to be patient before jumping in too soon.

Several less-heralded assets have been or will soon be completing multi-decade bottoms.

Other assets have become cheap enough to be worth purchasing immediately without waiting for lower prices. During the past several months we have had repeated downward spikes for assets as diverse as long-dated U.S. Treasuries (TLT), palladium (PALL), and the Japanese yen (FXY). U.S. Treasuries and their funds including TLT probably completed two-decade bottoms in October 2023 and added key higher lows in April 2024, while PALL may have bottomed in February 2024 at 78.50 and recently slid almost all the way back to higher lows just above 80. The most recent in this group to make new lows has been the Japanese yen, which during the past week touched its lowest level versus the U.S. dollar since 1986.

Funds of precious metals shares including GDX and GDXJ will eventually become compelling buying opportunities, but history and the traders' commitments tell us clearly that we must wait several months or longer before taking action.

QQQ dropped 83.6% from its peak on March 10, 2000 to its bottom on October 10, 2002. Meanwhile, HUI, an index of gold mining shares, completed a key bottom on November 15-16, 2000 and before the end of 2003 was worth more than seven times as much. Therefore, wait several months after QQQ has begun a major bear market and then get ready to aggressively purchase gold mining and silver mining shares. Be patient and don't act too soon.

One way we can be certain that it is too early to buy GDX or GDXJ is that the traders' commitments are especially bearish for gold, silver, and platinum. Commercials (see cftc.gov) such as miners, fabricators, and jewelers who own physical gold are long 86,551 and short 358,039 contracts which is more than 4:1 short to long. Non-commercials (primarily hedge funds) are long 284,885 and short 38,656 which is more than 7:1 long to short. Regardless of how much gold China's central bank does or doesn't buy, these are unsustainable speculative longs which will be dramatically flushed out over the next several months. Gold bullion will drop below two thousand U.S. dollars per troy ounce and could eventually fall below 1800 before powerfully rebounding afterward.

The bottom line: it's not different this time. Don't fall victim to the soft-landing myth. As well-known stocks including Apple (AAPL) and Costco (COST) have been have been trading for roughly five times their long-term average price-earnings ratios, the only realistic possibility will be massive percentage losses for large-cap U.S. stocks during the next few years. Following bubble peaks, stocks don't just retreat from overvalued levels to fair value and stop dropping; they usually end up with undervaluations of 35% to 60% as we had previously experienced frequently including 2008-2009 and 2002-2003. U.S. Treasury yields have been close to their highest levels in more than two decades and will serve as an irresistible magnet once U.S. stocks have fallen enough to make some investors nervous about continuing to be so heavily overinvested in the most popular big U.S. companies.

Disclosure of current holdings:

Below is my current asset allocation as of 4:00 p.m. on Friday, June 28, 2024. Each position is listed as its percentage of my total liquid net worth.

I computed the exact totals for each position and grouped these according to sector.

The order is as follows: 1) U.S. government bonds; 2) shorts; 3) bear funds; 4) gold/silver mining; 5) coins; 6) miscellaneous securities.

VMFXX/TIAA(Traditional)/bank CDs/FZDXX/FZFXX/SPRXX/SPAXX/BPRXX/Savings/Checking long: 37.24%;

17-Week/52-Week/26-Week/13-Week/2-Year/8-Week/3-Year/5,10-Year TIPS/4-Week/42-Day long/20-Year: 22.91%;

I Bonds long: 11.01%;

TLT long: 10.75%;

PMM long: 0.01%;

XLK short (all shorts are once again unhedged): 34.84%;

QQQ short: 23.78%;

SMH short: 1.61%;

AAPL short: 0.12%;

SARK long: 1.00%;

PSQ long: 0.04%;

PALL long: 1.10%;

Gold/silver/platinum coins: 7.12%;

FXY long: 0.58%.

"Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor." --Robert Lee Frost

BUSTING HEDGE FUNDS (December 17, 2023): I had worked at Thomson Reuters for 16-1/2 years; the person sitting next to me had the responsibility of tracking hedge funds and reporting on their behavior. After doing this job for a couple of decades, he pointed out to me how the vast majority of hedge funds which had shown little correlation in their investing behavior through the early 1990s had become increasingly alike by the second decade of this century. The proliferation of hedge-fund conferences where they discussed their "best ideas," combined with nearly identical computer algorithms and momentum strategies becoming increasingly much more popular, almost totally displaced former tendencies toward value investing and identifying compelling bargains.

Although there remain key exceptions including money managed by Seth Klarman, Marc Faber, Jim Rogers, Howard Marks, Ray Dalio, and some others where it is unlikely that you will be able to have them handle your accounts, more than 90% of hedge funds are crowding into identical concepts at any given time. This herd following is especially prevalent at key extremes and has almost certainly caused many of those extremes to become much more exaggerated than they would have been if they hadn't existed. It is also increasingly the case that hedge funds as a group are doing almost exactly the opposite of top corporate insiders and commercials. Thus, tracking insider behavior and the traders' commitments has demonstrated repeated multi-decade extremes where the insiders and commercials are heavily on one side while hedge funds have been piling even more aggressively the other way.

Doing the same as insiders and commercials and the opposite of hedge funds has become an increasingly available and profitable investing strategy which I have been doing more consistently as the 21st century has progressed.

As a result, the most consistently successful strategy in the 21st century has been to do whatever the insiders and commercials are doing at any rare extreme, while going against the hedge funds. During the past year we have already seen several examples of this behavior with hedge funds establishing an all-time record short position in U.S. Treasuries in October 2023. This was followed by the biggest Treasury rally in four decades which intensified during the past week as hedge funds rushed to close out their shorts ahead of all the other hedge funds, and were not particularly successful in doing so. TLT had traded at 81.92 in the pre-market session on October 23, 2022, and less than two months later was trading above 99.

Hedge funds piling into the AI bubble is their latest extremely overcrowded trade, while the top corporate insiders of these companies have done all-time record selling of their shares.

The latest overcrowding by hedge funds has been in being long AI stocks. While most U.S. and global stocks and their funds including IWM have been in bear markets since they had topped out in November 2021, funds which are concentrated in the biggest and most popular megacaps which have generated the most investor excitement in this year's AI bubble have dramatically outperformed in spite of their unimpressive profit growth. QQQ has almost regained its all-time top, while XLK and SMH are among those funds which have experienced the greatest percentage gains during the past year and have achieved new record highs. The top insiders of these companies have never sold more aggressively than they have done during the past few years, while the only time hedge funds had been more committed to any concept was when they had been massively short U.S. Treasuries in October 2023.

This chart, just updated, highlights the amazing recent overcrowding by hedge funds into QQQ and Nasdaq 100 futures which has achieved an overwhelmingly lopsided extreme by a large factor even when compared with 2021 or 2022:

Less historically extreme but still massive overcrowding has created other 2023 situations ripe for busting.

Hedge funds, as is evidenced by the official exchange data at cftc.gov, had never demonstrated a higher ratio of shorts to longs for palladium, thereby leading to PALL plummeting to 85.25 at 12:06 p.m. on December 5, 2023. Since then it has rebounded above 100. Hedge funds piled massively into gold on Sunday evening, December 3, 2023 to reach a spot price of 2137.50 U.S. dollars per troy ounce for the first time in history. Given how hedge fund crowding leads to huge reversals, gold bullion is likely to drop to around 1750 during the next several months before enjoying its next strong rally. The traders' commitments for gold as of December 5, 2023 showed commercials (who are those that own physical gold, such as miners, jewelers, and fabricators) long 103,193 contracts and short 330,138 which is more than 3:1 short to long. Not surprisingly, almost all of those on the other side of this trade were hedge funds and related managed money organizations which the commodity exchange calls "large speculators."

Silver's commitments the same week showed commercials long 40,974 and short 92,988 which was clearly also bearish for silver. Hedge funds were thus aggressively long gold and silver and even more aggressively short palladium. Palladium commercials that week were long 12,814 and short 1,537 which is more than 8:1 long to short.

Hedge funds had done all-time record crowding into shorting the Japanese yen, enabling the yen to fall to its lowest point since July-August 1990. Since then the yen, which trades as an exchange-traded fund via FXY, has experienced its strongest short-term rebound since the Bretton Woods agreement was terminated over a half century ago.

Hedge funds formed a lesser bubble by massively overcrowding into energy commodities and their shares two months ago.

Several times since November 2022 including around the middle of September 2023, hedge funds massively crowded into anything relating to energy while energy insiders sold shares at their most intense pace ever recorded. This was an especially notable reversal for top energy executives who in 2020 were their most aggressive in buying their own shares in their entire history. Starting on September 14, 2023, when XLE reached an all-time dividend-adjusted zenith of 93.685, energy shares and their funds including XLE have been among the biggest losers of all unleveraged exchange-traded funds in any sector.

The media often encourage ordinary investors to do as the hedge funds are doing, which is not surprising since they get a lot of their information from hedge funds which are naturally trying to get others to follow whatever will benefit their own portfolios.

Why have the media suddenly been talking about a "Fed pivot?" It's not because financial journalists have suddenly discovered how to interpret whatever the Fed has been doing. It is because they receive a lot of their data and even more of their interpretation of that data from hedge funds which naturally want to get retail investors to pile into their largest positions. In addition, whenever any asset is especially popular or depressed, the media will seek out stories which will allegedly explain "why" U.S. Treasury yields will keep climbing even when they are at their highest levels since 2000 (as in October 2023) or why AI stocks will keep rising regardless of how overpriced they are (as in December 2023). If you follow the media then you will repeatedly buy near each top and sell near each bottom.

The current U.S. equity bear market is following its usual sequence of sector bottoms.

The Russell 2000 and nearly all related funds such as IWM, along with most stocks worldwide which are unrelated to the AI bubble, have been in notable bear markets since their November 2021 tops, on average losing about 20% of their value during the past 25 months. Before any U.S. equity bear market intensifies, as the current one will almost certainly do soon, we have a sequence of historic sector bottoms which are completed in the following order: 1) U.S. Treasuries which probably completed their nadirs in October 2023 and are in major uptrends; 2) gold mining and silver mining shares which I expect will bottom around the spring of 2024 before initiating powerful rebounds; 3) emerging-market stocks and bonds which will perhaps bottom around the summer of 2024 with Chinese shares notably underpriced and which could thereby become compelling bargains at that time; 4) non-precious commodity producers which might also gain by substantial percentages after they bottom later in 2024; 5) special situations which vary from one bear market to another. In this case, the sectors which could approach multi-year lows in 2024 and thereafter rally strongly might include currently unpopular biotech shares and their funds like XBI along with airline shares and their funds including JETS.

I also plan to be open-minded about other sectors becoming worthwhile for purchase sometime during 2024.

The ultimate bottoms for most AI shares won't occur until 2025 or 2026.

As a general rule, those shares which achieve historic bubbles tend to lose over 80% of their value and to take two to three years to complete their total downtrends. After QQQ had topped out on March 10, 2000, it lost 83.6% of its value by the time it bottomed exactly 31 months later on October 10, 2002 (see stockcharts.com which includes all reinvested dividends by default). If QQQ loses 83.6% of its recent high of 406.5, which could potentially go even higher in the short run, then this would mean an eventual QQQ bottom of 66.666 which looks to me like a very lucky number indeed.

The bottom line: An increasingly profitable strategy during the 21st century capitalizes on the tendency of the vast majority of hedge funds to use momentum methods and to thereby overcrowd massively into various positions. Top corporate insiders and commercials throughout various points in 2023 have been doing almost exactly the opposite of those hedge funds near all key extremes for a wide variety of assets including AI stocks in December (QQQ,SLK,SMH), U.S. Treasuries in October (TLT), the Japanese yen in November (FXY), large-cap energy shares in September (XLE), and all precious metals in early December including palladium (PALL), gold (GLD), and silver (SLV). You can therefore consistently make money, although not always immediately, by following the insiders and commercials and doing the exact opposite of the most overcrowded hedge-fund concentrations during the next several years.

Disclosure of current holdings:

Below is my current asset allocation as of 4:00 p.m. on Friday, December 22, 2023. Each position is listed as its percentage of my total liquid net worth.

I computed the exact totals for each position and grouped these according to sector.

The order is as follows: 1) U.S. government bonds; 2) shorts; 3) bear funds; 4) gold/silver mining; 5) coins; 6) miscellaneous securities.

VMFXX/TIAA(Traditional)bank CDs/FZDXX/FZFXX/SPRXX/SPAXX/Savings/Checking long: 36.32%;

26-Week/17-Week/52-Week/13-Week/2-Year/8-Week/3-Year/5,10-Year TIPS/4-Week/42-Day long: 21.66%;

TLT long: 11.67%;

I Bonds long: 10.54%;

PMM long: 0.01%;

XLK short (all shorts once again unhedged): 28.39%;

QQQ short: 17.23%;

XLE short: 5.15%;

XLI short: 2.77%;

XLV short: 1.69%;

SMH short: 1.01%;

AAPL short: 0.02%;

SARK long: 0.90%;

PSQ long: 0.03%;

PALL long: 0.20%;

GDXJ long: 0.14% (fully hedged with out-of-the-money covered calls);

Gold/silver/platinum coins: 6.28%;

FXY long: 0.17%;

PAK long: 0.03%.