1987 aka 2012 Crash by Marc Faber

Today I have very important news. According to Marc Faber, we will have a crash like in 1987 in the second half of this year, if there is no QE3. Marc Faber is known to have accurately predicted the 1987 crash. So we better prepare for this event.

As we already can see on the federal balance sheet, there has not been any QE3 since July 2011 (Chart 1).

Chart 1: Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

What happened in 1987 (also known as Black Monday)? And what to do about it? Let's go over all asset classes one by one in this article.

Jim Rogers might sell the euro

It's amazing how the euro has outperformed gold since Hollande became president of France (Chart 1-4). It signals that there is a higher risk that Greece will not get their aid package. Euro global polls say that there is 50% chance that Greece will exit the Eurozone. If this were to happen it will be a deflationary collapse first, after which hyperinflation will occur.

Chart 1-4: Gold Price in Euros

During the second half of 2011 we even see that the euro is losing its secondary currency reserve status. The U.S. dollar is increasing its status as reserve currency (Table 1).

Table 1: Reserve Currency

Jim Rogers knows this and might sell the euro in the future.

As Europe is going to contract in 2012, Mario Draghi has signaled that further stimulus is on its way. 

China pegging CNY to USD once again

Since the European crisis, which started end 2011, the Chinese have been reverting their policy once again. Basically, they are pulling their money out of Europe and putting it in the United States. China is already starting to stop buying European debt. Instead they are accumulating U.S. debt and gold.

Go here to read the full analysis: China is pegging the CNY to the USD once again.

Chart 1: China U.S. treasury holdings (billion USD)

Chart 2: Exchange rate USD/CNY

Eric Sprott on CNBC

According to Eric Sprott, gold will be over $US 2000/ounce and silver will be above $US 50/ounce by the end of the year 2012.

I'm curious if this will hold..., I highly doubt it.

For gold it should do something like this:

Chart 1: Gold Price Prediction (Eric Sprott)

For silver it should do something like this:

Chart 2: Silver Price Prediction (Eric Sprott)

By 2013: Another Increase in U.S. Debt Ceiling

Everyone is saying how great the United States is growing with a positive purchasing manager index and positive GDP. But the fact is that U.S. public debt is growing much faster as GDP. But this happened only just recently.

Before 2008 (the economical crisis), debt was increasing at a slower pace as GDP. The slope at which debt rose was moderate. Notable is that for each unit increase of debt, we got more than one unit increase in GDP.

After 2008 though, we get a very different picture. Please go here to read my analysis. 

Chart 1: U.S. Total Public Debt VS. U.S. Debt Ceiling

Spain's government bonds shoot up above 6%

Spain's government bonds shot up today to 6.1%. At this rate we're rapidly approaching the "danger zone" of 7% and above, often mentioned by James Turk. You can easily see LTRO I and LTRO II in this chart 1. Maybe Spain will need LTRO III to make the yields drop again...

Chart 1: Spanish Bond Yields (10 YR)

Meanwhile, people keep fleeing into German bonds, which dropped to 1.5%.

Chart 2: German Bond Yields (10 YR)

Sprott Silver Premium (PSLV) at a record low

Amazing, the silver premium of Sprott's silver trust is at a record low of 3.64 % today. Very bearish going forward.

Chart 1: PSLV premium (%) (blue) vs price (USD) (orange)

Status on the Dow-Gold Ratio

Gold has been doing miserably on negative news in Europe. As a result the Dow/Gold ratio has been going up since Europe has been implementing LTRO I and LTRO II late 2011. I believe we will have support now at Dow/Gold ratio of 9 and it could be time to sell the Dow and buy gold (Chart 1).

In this article I go deeper into the "China play" on this gold dip.

Chart 1: Dow Gold Ratio Short Term

Copper turns to backwardation, prices poised to rise

I have been monitoring the copper warehouse stock levels in previous articles and today I came across an interesting article on Seekingalpha talking about copper futures contango. In that article the author gave a historical chart of the premium or discount for contracts extending about a year to 18 months in the future.

We will see that backwardation will have a positive effect on copper prices and much more. The Chinese have been doing very odd things with their copper warehouse stocks.

To read about this go to: Copper turns to backwardation.

Chart 1 and 2: Copper futures contango and copper price

Rising U.S. Trade Deficit for March 2012

The U.S. trade deficit has widened to $US 50 billion in March 2012. The trendline since 2009 up till now has been pointing to widening trade deficits (Chart 1).

Imports were probably higher due to more expensive oil imports, while exports have slumped (Chart 2).

Chart 1: U.S. Balance of Trade

Chart 2: U.S. exports

Incidentally, the U.S. dollar cash index is again pointing down just recently (Chart 3), despite problems in Europe. The dollar index spot (DXY) is currently at 79.5. If this index continues to fall, I predict that imports will go up even more in the future as the U.S. dollar loses purchasing power. Accompanied by the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, will be an ever more rising trade deficit.

Chart 3: Dollar Cash Index

The "Hollande" Effect

Investors are speculating on what will happen when François Hollande wins the French elections this Sunday 06 May 2012. Many things can occur, please go here to read about the consequences.

Election results