This is probably my favorite special situation of all for its simplicity.

Joel Greenblatt wrote about it in his 1997 book You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. Greenblatt, at that time, was a relative unknown. But his Gotham Capital had put up 50% average annual returns for 10 years. The book had a big impact on how I think about investing.

What are we talking about? Spinoffs…

A spinoff is simply when one company takes a part of its business and makes a formal separation with the parent company by creating a new, free-standing company.

You don’t have to own the parent to the get spinoff. It’s just that the shareholders of the parent get the shares automatically. You can pick up shares after a spinoff.

Spinoffs as a group have a tendency to beat the market. There have been a number of studies on this point. The most famous might be a Penn State study that showed spinoffs outperformed the market by about 10% per year in the first three years of independence.

That’s a huge edge!

Why does this happen? I think the best explanation is simply rooted in the nature of business. When a smaller group is freed from the parent, there are creative and entrepreneurial energies released as well. There is a management team that can now focus on the spun-out assets alone, without worrying about what the parent thinks or needs. There is some benefit from this focus and freedom.

So spinoffs are one of those pools of investing ideas I routinely fish in for new ideas. The amazing thing is that despite all the publicity and studies, the anomaly persists! Why? Well, as Greenblatt says, it’s practically built into the system. “The spinoff process is a fundamentally inefficient method of distributing stock to the wrong people.”

After all, people didn’t ask to invest in the spinoff. They didn’t choose to buy the shares. They bought shares of the parent, not the spinoff, which were given to them. So they tend to sell the spinoff. This is what usually happens. And all that selling pressure drives down the shares.

The spinoff, too, is usually a small piece of the parent — maybe 10%, often less. So if you have $10,000 in a stock, you get maybe $500 of this other stock. Rather than bother with it, you just sell it. Institutions do this, too. Instead of spending resources trying to figure out this new thing, they just get rid of it.

As Greenblatt writes: “Does this practice seem foolish? Yes. Understandable? Sort of. Is it an opportunity for you to pick up some low-priced shares? Definitely.”

Why do a spinoff at all then? Each case is different. Sometimes it is a way to get rid of a business that is tough to sell on its own. Tax reasons might enter into it. Or it might solve some other strategic objective. The most-common reason is to create shareholder value with greater transparency. The hope is that the market might appreciate the separate businesses more fully.

One example is General Growth Properties. Spinning out Howard Hughes was a way to package all of its development assets into one company so it could focus purely on running malls. Howard Hughes owns a hodgepodge of planned communities and things unrelated to malls. As a separate company, Howard Hughes can devote its full attention to its development assets. It’s a win-win.

Greenblatt offers a simple three-point checklist to search for winners. Howard Hughes met all three:

• “Institutions don’t want it.” I can tell you there was no interest in Howard Hughes from institutions. Even now, there is little interest in the company. It still has no Wall Street coverage, for instance. It doesn’t fit it any of Wall Street’s boxes. It’s a hodgepodge of real estate with uncertain cash flows, neither fish nor fowl.

• “Insiders want it.” By contrast, insiders loved Howard Hughes. They bought shares. Brookfield was among the big investors here and still owns 6% of the stock today.

• “A previously hidden investment opportunity is created or revealed.” Buried in GGP, Howard Hughes assets could easily be ignored and overlooked. But on its own, with attention and capital, Howard Hughes can advance projects and unleash their potential.

Howard Hughes traded independently on Nov. 10, 2010. It went down after the first week of trading. But by April 2011, it had nearly doubled. Even if you had held the shares from the spinoff to now, you’d be up 25%, versus 5% for the market as a whole.

That’s why you should always pay attention to spinoffs…

Sincerely,

Chris Mayer
for The Penny Sleuth

3 Easy Steps to an Unusual Investment “Guarantee” was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

We are getting a sense of what life is like with the new Fed policy of openness. It means that the chairman tries to beat the world record for the longest, most-boring press conference in modern history. Ben Bernanke is getting even better at that crucial skill of repeatedly saying nothing at great length. The better he gets at this, the longer he is willing to entertain questions from reporters.

They all ask some version of the same question, in any case. It’s the cocktail-hour question asked of every economist: What does the future hold and what should be done about it? The problem is that Bernanke doesn’t know more about the future than the markets know. Actually, looking at the transcripts of the 2006 FOMC meetings, the Fed knows much less than the markets know.

But at least we now know what Bernanke thinks he knows. A short summary of the flurry of news from the Fed yesterday: The economy is still in the tank, it will stay that way for years, interest rates will be held at zero and savers can go to hell.

That last part we can glean from the most-interesting question posed to Bernanke yesterday. Greg Robb of MarketWatch pointed out to him that he has some severe Republican critics. The Fed has been a major issue in the debates and on the campaign trail. Mr. Robb had a theory about why: Many Republican voters lived on fixed incomes that depend on some return on their money. For this crowd, zero interest rates are a disaster. Robbery, really.

Bernanke’s first response was to say that he was not going to involve himself in politics because he “has a job to do.” It is a credit to the press corp that they did not double over in laughter at the ridiculous claim that the Fed’s job has nothing whatever to do with politics! After 100 years of Fed service, it is pretty obvious that the Fed serves two clients: the big banks and the government. The Fed certainly doesn’t serve the class of people who save and invest.

So how did Bernanke deal with the second part of the question? This was interesting. He said that he was very sorry for savers and those who depend on interest income, but they need to understand that they too have a long-term interest in a healthy economy. If investment and productivity are rising, they create the conditions for growth down the line, and surely this is good for everyone.

That’s some crazy kind of circuitous reasoning going on there. It’s a bit like the thief who steals the silverware and then explains to the former owners that a wider distribution of beautiful tableware is surely good for everyone in the long run. Even if you buy the argument, it would be nicer if the owner had some choice in the matter.

And there’s another problem that is so incredibly obvious that no one at the press conference even dared point it out. The problem is that the zero-interest-rate policy has not worked to boost economic growth. What possible basis is there for thinking that two more years of this extermination of the saving class is going to do what the last three years have not done?

Of course, it depends on what you mean by “worked.”

Let’s say that the Fed wants to drive all investors away from government bonds and into riskier instruments in an attempt to artificially boost financial markets. Check.

Let’s say that the Fed wants to punish anyone who wants to sock away money for a rainy day and, instead, prod them into buying more plasma TVs, digital gizmos and summer homes. Check.

And let’s say that the Fed wants to artificially suppress the government’s own costs of borrowing in order to reduce pressure on the political class. Check.

In all these ways, abolishing interest rates works for the Fed and the political elites. But there are at least three downsides.

First, banks depend on interest payments for profitability, and low interest removes the financial incentive for banks to lend money in a normal way. This is why commercial bank loans remain low, with the latest data showing the volume at mid-2007 levels. One might suppose that this is contrary to the Fed’s aims, but it is a price that it is willing to pay.

Second, a low interest rate agenda requires that the Fed try to control not just the short-term rates over which it has the most influence, but also rates across the entire yield curve. This means removing risk premiums on longer-term loans by implicitly guaranteeing bailouts, just like those of 2008-10. This entrenches more moral hazard and drives a wedge between risk and result.

Third, this policy of low rates is similar to — but even worse than — the very policies that created the bubble of the 2000s that burst in 2008 and prompted the worst financial and economic calamity of many generations. The Fed has learned absolutely nothing from even its own most-recent history. If people can’t earn money through interest, financiers will find some other way to market risk, leading to crazy investments schemes and misallocated capital.

As David Malpass writes in The Wall Street Journal:

Near-zero interest rates penalize savers and channel artificially cheap capital to government, big corporations and foreign countries. One of the most fundamental principles of economics is that holding prices artificially low causes shortages. When something of value is free, it runs out fast and only the well-connected get any. Interest rates are the price for credit and shouldn’t be controlled at zero. It causes cheap credit for those with special access but shortages for those without — primarily new and small businesses and those seeking private-sector mortgages.

The big take-away from the Fed’s day in the news is its new policy benchmark of keeping inflation at 2%. This is sheer silliness. There is no such thing as a price level, as even recent CPI releases illustrate. Some prices went up (food, education, health), and some prices went down (oil, software, services). Mash them together and you get a single number that applies to absolutely nothing in particular.

In any case, the Fed can’t control prices in this way. It is always driving while looking in the rearview mirror. When the crash comes, there is nothing the Fed can do about it, despite Bernanke’s repeated promises to rescue the world from any bad effects of his policies.

As Bloomberg’s Caroline Baum says, it’s almost as if the Fed itself has completely forgotten the existence of the “long and variable lag” that separates its policies from their effects. She recalls Milton Friedman’s own analogy of the “fool in the shower” who keeps turning the water from all hot to all cold and wonders why he is either scalded or frozen.

Baum concludes that under Bernanke’s own plan, we would have “eight years of 0% interest rates. There will be a revolution in this country before then if the economy is lousy enough to warrant 0% interest rates for that long.”

Really? One would hope.

Regards,

Jeffrey Tucker

Zero Percent Uber Alles was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Source

March S&P E-mini Futures: Today’s day session range estimate is 1320-1333. The longer term trend is upward. A rally from the November 25 low at 1147.50 which matches the size of the October rally would bring the ES to 1370.

QQQ: Now headed for 63.

TNX (ten year note yield): The 10 year yield has started a move to 2.50%.

Euro-US Dollar: Support is at 1.2620 has produced a big rally. It should continue to 1.3540 before the market turns down once more. A move to 1.2400 will then be in the cards. The Fed announcement yesterday has made the market reassess its estimate of likely interest rate differentials between the EU and the US . It now expects EU rates to be relatively higher than it previously thought.

Dollar-Yen: The market is headed down to 70.00. Resistance above the market is at 80.00.

March Crude: An extended upswing is underway. It will probably take crude to 114 or so.

GLD – February Gold: I think gold will probably drop to 1510 or so and then begin a move to 2100.

SLV - March Silver: I think silver is headed for 50.00. Support is at 26.00.

Google: Google is now headed for its 2007 top near 750.

Apple: Upside target is now 475.

Source

The following is a guest post from All About Trends, who teach traders how to achieve consistent gains through stock selection and daily trading education. When you become a premium member for $15/month (50% the regular price) you can expect to receive daily trade ideas and market analysis, along with a concise trading plan for each trade.

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I managed to get my hands on a review copy of Motley Fool contributor Morgan Housel’s upcoming book on the economy, stocks, and the housing market. It’s a really fantastic read, but unfortunately I can’t point you to it yet because I was just reading an early copy.

You can, however, grab a copy of Morgan’s previous book on Amazon. Or you can get a flavor for the kind of topics he covers in the new book by checking out his latest on Fool.com.

-AvgJoe

Source

The business of medical biotechnologies operates within an extraordinarily complex regulatory system.

The SEC and the IRS are only the beginning of the story…

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration determines what can legally be sold. It even exercises control over what can be said by companies about medical therapies. Elsewhere, other regulatory authorities play similar roles.

It was not always that way, of course. Prior to the 20th century, there was virtually no regulation of medical therapies. Medical decisions were considered the domain of doctors and patients, who bore the responsibilities and risks associated with the use of any product. Even currently banned Class A drugs used for recreational purposes were available for sale without limitations.

Today, the average cost of bringing a medical product from conception to market is around $400 million, according to The Cato Institute. The time required can be as long as 10 years.

As a result, the FDA is widely considered in need of major reform, though the nature of those reforms is a matter of debate. Responding to criticisms, the FDA has implemented some programs to accelerate review procedures.

For example, Big Pharma is allowed to directly pay the costs of the process in some cases, which can result in a faster ruling. The FDA’s response to criticisms has often focused on the need for more money to accelerate reviews. Given budgetary pressures created by the financial and entitlement crises, this is unlikely. The FDA’s desire to expand oversight is, therefore, not likely to be accomplished, in the near term at least.

The FDA currently controls only the initial approval of a therapy. It does not prohibit the use of approved therapies for uses other than which they were approved, though many in the agency would clearly like to take over what is a far-less-regulated market than many believe. These unapproved, but legal, uses are referred to as off-label.

Currently, biotechs typically target applications with the highest probability of approval, knowing that a drug or device will be widely used for unapproved purposes as soon as it is available for sale. However, the FDA prohibits the advertising of uses other than those for which a therapy was approved.

The FDA has also become very aggressive policing the publication of unapproved medical information by companies that do not sell drugs. Recently, for example, the FDA sent Diamond Foods a letter stating, “your walnut products are drugs,” because the company had publicized well-documented research about the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts. Diamond was threatened with “seizure” if the company did not immediately stop educating the public to the benefits of walnuts.

The move is rife with irony, as the National Institutes of Health has lagged decades behind nutritional researchers regarding fats in general. For many years, the federal government officially endorsed the old, simplistic food-pyramid philosophy based on the notion that all fat consumption should be reduced. Researchers have shown, overwhelmingly, that most people are deficient in certain essential fats… especially omega-3s, which play an important role in reducing heart disease and other diseases.

Many consumers don’t have that understanding and could benefit from it, but the FDA frequently prevents companies from talking about the benefits of their products. This, by the way, is an example of what my dietitian wife calls regulatory “information hoarding.”

Diamond Foods, of course, quickly complied with the FDA’s ban on unapproved educational activities. However, the event highlights the tension between the agency and providers of natural products that may have health benefits.

This tension was codified in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). Sponsored by Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the law specifically excludes naturally occurring substances, sold as dietary supplements, from the FDA approval process.

This was, in a sense, the birth of the modern American nutraceutical industry. Combining the words “nutrition” and “pharmaceutical,” nutraceuticals are foods or substances derived from foods, either synthesized or purified, and sold for health benefits. In Japan, the nutraceutical market emerged in the 1980s. Today, almost half of all Japanese consume nutraceutical products. The U.S., however, is catching up. Drug and health food stores have long stocked a wide range of nutraceuticals.

Increasingly, even grocery stores dedicate shelf space to natural products ranging from natural vitamin supplements to electrolyte-rich sports drinks.

Furthermore, we are also seeing nutraceuticals increasingly appear in foods to promote good health. Many foods are now being fortified with health-promoting ingredients. These include cereals with added omega-3 fatty acids, fruit juices with herbal ingredients that have biochemical properties and milk with vitamin D.

Even more esoteric products are sold in GNC and sports-oriented supplement stores. While many products may have little or no real value, it’s also clear that some have powerful biological effects.

One such product is creatine, 2-(methylguanidino) ethanoic acid. Creatine is a nitrogenous organic acid that occurs naturally in vertebrates, thus qualifying the product for nutraceutical status. It helps supply energy to all cells in the body, though most users are probably primarily interested in its effects on muscle cells…

Creatine increases the formation of adenosine triphosphate, which transports chemical energy within cells. The result for many, especially those who do not eat a great deal of meat, is increased muscle mass and anaerobic strength. For that reason, creatine is widely and legally used as a supplement by athletes who rely on strength, as opposed to aerobic abilities.

Creatine is the subject of scientific inquiry for other reasons as well. There is some evidence that it assists in muscle-damage repair experienced during intense training. One study has demonstrated increased cognitive abilities in humans, and animal studies point to potential in the treatment of ALS and Huntington’s disease. Some people are taking creatine for those reasons, but because it is a nutraceutical, manufacturers cannot publish any such possible benefits. To get permission to do so would cost many millions of dollars.

Today, the U.S. nutraceutical market is worth approximately $87 billion in sales, but is expanding rapidly.

There are many reasons for this growth.

In part, the nutraceutical movement is an expression of the widespread desire to take control and responsibility for one’s own health in an increasingly impersonal and bureaucratized health care system. As such, the current state of the nutraceutical industry is very similar to the pharmaceutical market in the 22-year period between the institution of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Government can monitor for purity and certain aspects of commercial speech, but not much else. Though this was not planned, this minimal regulation has actually increased public confidence in nutraceuticals.

Moreover, public perception of nutraceuticals is changing as more and more validated therapies appear. This is certainly my experience. Not that long ago, the health food store industry offered little of real benefit except basic dietary nutrients. More often than not, natural products were ineffective placebos at best, and harmful at worst. This has changed, and this change will accelerate for one reason — exponential growth in science, powered in large part by rapid improvements in information technology.

Given the frustrations of those who feel, often rightly, that they have been prevented from bringing important drug therapies to market because of onerous regulatory hurdles, it was predictable that many innovators and entrepreneurs would turn to nutraceuticals as an avenue of exploration. In this endeavor, there have been notable successes that have changed the face of biotech.

Serious scientists are applying the latest and most-sophisticated technologies to the uncountable natural molecules that exist in our biosphere.

Bioinformatics, molecular biology and nutrigenomics are contributing to this new field outside the bureaucratic hand of the regulators — with all the opportunities and risks that it implies. You do not want to ignore companies best positioned to profit from this disruptive revolution…

Yours for transformational profits,

Patrick Cox
for The Penny Sleuth

Invest In This Emerging Multibillion-Dollar Market was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

First, a correction. A Bar regular writes…

“Joe Lieberman is not a Democrat. He is an independent, as he resigned from the Democratic Party. Don’t you ever check things out before stating them as facts?

“Wish you the best with your paranoia,”

“– Steve K”

This comes from one of our most-faithful, unswerving, persistent critics. A man who has dutifully read our material for years so he can tell us why we’re wrong about the economy, politics, art, science and love.

Our copy editing department called us on this, too. In our rush yesterday, we copied and pasted the pre-edited version of Jeffrey’s article…instead of the one that the copy editors had edited. So our apologies for that.

But if we were to be honest with you (and we always are), we would have to admit that while it may be technically inaccurate to count Lieberman among the Democrats, it is a matter of semantics that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

These political labels can be distracting. Personally, we don’t care what Lieberman calls himself. We care about what he does. The man is as well intentioned as he is clueless…which makes him especially dangerous. He bends most of his energy to coming up with more powers for the state under acts with comically Orwellian names.

Note that the reader who pointed out our error also wished us well with our paranoia. We suppose he means our worry about things like Lieberman’s insistence that the state should strip Americans of citizenship based on no evidence, should the state feel it necessary.

We are amazed at how the state grows from an annoying goblin into a sulphur-spitting archdemon…how it can start biting people in half (figuratively, of course) and spear infants on its trident, while its victims shrug their shoulders and mutter, “I really don’t see that there’s any cause for alarm.”

But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. As disagreeable as it may be, we turn our attention to yet another political figure…

Mitt Romney recently released his tax information for the past couple of years. Wouldn’t you know it, he managed to lower his effective tax rate to 13.9%…by giving away millions to things he cares about.

That’s not what the headlines blare, however. What you see is that this man who earned millions of dollars per year paid far, far less a percentage of that income to the feds than middle-class suckers.

This is supposed to rouse the rabble. That’s certainly what the impressively eyebrowed Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett, meant to do when he compared his tax payments with those of his secretary.

During our regular morning confab, LFB executive editor Jeffrey Tucker said of this, “The only really fair tax would be a fixed-dollar head tax. Like $1,000 per year. Or whatever.”

We had to push our seat back away from the table to give ourselves the room to laugh uproariously. A fixed-dollar head tax? Ha!

Sure, it makes perfect sense. But this is modern America. We are all progressives now, comrade. From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.

A man who makes more can afford to pay more. And he must. At least until he makes enough to employ some impressive loopholes in the purposely convoluted tax code.

“Of course,” Jeffrey pointed out concerning the progressive tax payment model, “if private enterprise did this, we would all see this as unfair exploitation.”

And of course, Jeffrey is right. Could you imagine if you had to pay more for your gas, meat and bread because you earned more?

Now, individual merchants can discharge their goods as they see fit, giving discounts to whomever they wish based on whatever criteria they wish: height, age, looks, degree of familiar relation…

A butcher may give his elderly widow neighbor endless credit that he never means to make her pay (like the Fed does for the U.S. government). Or that same butcher may give the shapely, unattached 20-something with the playful smile an extra cut of meat at no charge.

But those are the minute decisions of the free market based on factors that only the individual players know and can adjust to. Government with its heavy hand — and with eyes that can’t see all the details — just across the board charges more for its “services” based on the “customers’” ability to pay. And it’s not like you can take your business elsewhere if you don’t agree…

The individual seller’s rationale for any progression in pricing will reflect his intimate knowledge of conditions surrounding the sale and the marginal benefit to him of the price variance. And it’s important to note that the market itself will bear only so much progressive pricing. Most folks won’t mind that the butcher gives the widow a free ride…or even that he gives the prettiest girls a bit more meat…

But should that butcher charge the higher earners more, he would quickly lose the business of those higher earners. That’s the market at work. Buyers and sellers determining what’s fair. This kind of market democracy we like! (It’s the political kind that leaves us cold.)

The government’s pricing rationale (taxes are the price we pay for government…which is not synonymous with civilization), however, is not quite so sound…

The government says that it should take more from the rich than the poor on grounds that the marginal dollar is actually worth less to the higher earner than it is to the lower earner. But how can we know this for sure? Value is subjective, and you can’t compare the worth of money between any two people.

Further, one could argue with more substance that there is even less reason to take money from the wealthy since that money is likely to be invested, saved or donated. Taxing the rich thereby taxes society more directly than when you tax poor people who mostly consume all they earn.

So back to Jeffrey’s fixed tax on each person…

“$1,000 per person per year would yield,” he notes, “about $300 billion all together. That was the cost of government during the Ford administration. Was government too small then?”

“Not sure,” we replied, “We’d say it was already too big by the Washington administration. And that the wooden-tooth bastard ought to have been hanged for treason after the Whiskey Rebellion…

“But I’m assuming that children would be subject to the tax, too,” we continued, “and that either parent would have to pay for them…?”

“Precisely so, but not that it matters that much. Say it’s only on everybody over 18 or some arbitrary age at which the state allows people to sell their skills in the marketplace. There were only about 75 million persons under 18 in the U.S. in 2011. So you still have very nearly $300 billion in taxes collected with just $1,000 per eligible taxee.”

“Hell, even panhandlers can come up with that,” we said. “Or would they even have to pay? They certainly don’t file income tax forms now…”

“Fine, reduce it to official households. There are over 130 million of those. So $130 billion in tax revenue. Which puts us squarely in the middle of LBJ’s crazed plan to bankrupt the country with guns and butter: 1966.

“One thing I want to make clear,” Jeffrey said. “Say you have a tax of 10%. Flat, right?

“No. 10% of $1 million is far more — 10 times more — than 10% of $100,000. High-income earners are punished far more. That’s why a head tax — as strange as it may seem to some — is the only flat tax.”

And we’re not really offering solutions. Because our suggestions amount to theorizing for now. We do, however, try to make sense of the degrees of our disgust.

We never saw a tax we actually liked. But there are taxes that make us want not quite want to revolt. If we had to pay some centralized warmongering nannies (and we do), we could live with a fixed tax like the one described above.

We hate when the government tries to incentivize anything, but a truly flat, fixed tax would indeed incentivize people to try to earn more. Earning more would reduce the impact of a fixed tax as a percentage of their incomes.

Of course, this won’t fly in modern America. The rich can pay more for the government we all get. So pay more they shall!

Local and even state taxes are another good example of taxes we can’t hate as much as the progressively looted chunk we send off to the feds every quarter. With more local taxes, we are clearly getting something of use for our money after all.

We can argue till our brown face turns blue about how much more efficiently the market would provide every single service the government does (though the shape of these things would likely be quite different)…

But concerning local government services — and the money extracted to pay for them — at least we can overwhelmingly agree with what our tax money pays for. This includes things like the sidewalks and roads we use and the police and fire protection.

Federal taxes are quite a different beast, however. The bullets used to tear into foreign brown skins…the guns used to fire them…the food and clothing of the soldiers holding the guns…the bombs dropped on insurgents and collateral wedding party attendees and teenage goatherds.

Which brings us to a letter we received today…

“Hi Jeffrey, Gary et al.,

“As always, I love your articles and critiques of how the America we love is slowly eroding away.

“I have a query, but first a little background…

“I am an Irish-American citizen living and working in Ireland since 2006…so I have seen this Irish economy collapse in sync with the economy I left in Michigan back in that hazy summer…

“To cut to the chase, my wife and I were blessed with our first child, born December 2011…

“Now she is eligible for Irish citizenship and she has her birth certificate to prove this. BUT she may also obtain her U.S. citizenship, care of me..

“My query?

“Given the near- and long-term future of the U.S….endless wars, increased poverty, insurmountable debts, increased taxes (and filing taxes even if she never lives/works in the U.S.) destruction of the middle class and the $$…etc.

“Why should my daughter become an American citizen?

“What are the reasons, given the glum future of the USA, to become one of us?

“Do the same reasons, land of the free and the brave, still hold through, or should she just stay Irish till her dying days?

“Would love to get your and your readers’ views on this..

“Cheers,

“Tim”

We would love to get views from the Whiskey patrons as well! Good patrons, please send those views here. ggibsonagora@gmail.com

And a hearty congratulations on the arrival of your daughter, Tim! We’ll buy you a shot should the chance present itself.

As for her citizenship…your Whiskey editor is torn on the subject. And far from qualified to offer any real advice. Especially in a legally binding sense. But we can share our biased, but considered opinion, for this is a matter we struggle with all the time.

We aren’t even U.S. citizens. Merely a legal resident who has lived here since he was a toddler. Many of the people we respect have been cutting their ties to the U.S., either just leaving physically…or actually giving up the legal right to live and work on these shores indefinitely.

Our own situation is different. Our own native land is small, poor and given to collectivist politics. We thus effectively possess refugee status. Our options for a long-term home should we fling our green card at a border guard and spit, “Here! Take it, for I no longer want any part of your warmongering, police-nanny state!”…well, those options are limited and poor.

We wouldn’t go back to the Caribbean. We suppose we could bounce around South America as long as someone paid us to write…and we could afford to leave various countries every few months to satisfy the visa requirements.

We are not experts (and we suggest you talk to one about this)…and we hesitate to be hypocrites. We do not even have U.S. citizenship, yet we remain in the U.S. Our first inclination is to tell you to spare your daughter of the burden (for the benefit-to-cost ratio of U.S. citizenship may continue to mount for the worse as she approaches adulthood).

But note that despite it all, we remain in the U.S. unwilling to break the inertia of our own living habits. We cast about the nation in search of a comfortable, quiet corner to call home. But we’re not quite ready to leave just yet…though each outrage brings us closer to the limits of our tolerance…

There is a good case for you to keep your daughter from ever becoming a tax cow for the U.S. Again, let’s put this to our Whiskey Shooters and see what we can come up with. We’ll probably run your responses this weekend. So get cracking: ggibsonagora@gmail.com.

In the meantime, let us consider this letter, which we received just minutes later…

“Mr. Gibson.

“It appears that you use the words citizen and national synonymously. They are not.

“The 14th Amendment (proposed by a Congress that lacked a quorum) was a solution to the 1850 Dred Scott decision, wherein the Supreme Court ruled that negros of African descent could not be citizens. The amendment granted a form of citizenship to those who were born in the United States and completely subject to its political (lawmaking) power. (It was a subsequent decision in which the court ruled that the subjection of the 14th Amendment was complete subjection in the feudal sense.)

“Before the 14th Amendment, citizens of the states established the qualifications for citizenship within their respective states, not the federal government. Citizens of the United States were so because of their immediate citizenship in the political body known as a state of the union. The sates of the union created the United States, so these sovereigns could not be completely subject to the lawmaking power of the United States in the feudal sense. Under certain circumstances, they could be subject to its civil, but not its political, jurisdiction. The United States was not their sovereign liege lord; sovereignty was vested in them, not in the government, state or national.

“As the court ruled in the Slaughter-House cases, the 14th Amendment gave nothing to state’s citizens. What it did do, and what you evidently do not see, is that the 14th Amendment created a new class of citizenship: citizen-serf, a human resource, part of the capital of the federal government, PROPERTY of the United States, aka, U.S. person.

“National is the word used by government today to describe what was formerly known as a state citizen, the person in whom the sovereignty is vested. He may or may or may not elect to be treated as though he is the property of the United States. According to the 13th Amendment, he has a choice.”

Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell us that the U.S. government, like every government everywhere else all throughout history, see itself in a feudal relationship with its citizens? That to the political class, we are not “purchasers of order and civilization,” but instead nothing more than cows to be milked for tax money?

OK, yeah, we see where you’re coming from.

Regards,

Gary Gibson

Hooray for the Rich Who Don’t Pay Taxes was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

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March S&P E-mini Futures: Today’s day session range estimate is 1295-1308. It looks like the market is about to break at least 40-50 points . The longer term trend is upward. A rally from the November 25 low at 1147.50 which matches the size of the October rally would bring the ES to 1370.

QQQ: Now headed for 63.

TNX (ten year note yield): The 10 year yield has started a move to 2.50%.

Euro-US Dollar: Support is at 1.2620 and a move to 1.2400 is in the cards. . Resistance above the market is at 1.3030 . I think the Euro is “decoupling” from the European and US stock markets because the European Central Bank has made an implicit commitment to provide whatever liquidity is necessary to the EU banking system.

Dollar-Yen: The market is headed down to 70.00. Resistance above the market is at 80.00.

March Crude: An extended upswing is underway. It will probably take crude to 114 or so.

GLD – February Gold: I think gold will probably drop to 1510 or so and then begin a move to 2100.

SLV - March Silver: I think silver is headed for 50.00. Support is at 26.00.

Google: Google is now headed for its 2007 top near 750.

Apple: Upside target is now 475.

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I keep coming back to this chart.

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My faithful followers on this blog have been patiently waiting for me to put up a fresh blog note, and now that the Newsletter followers have had first insight into Ron’s and my thinking, it is now time to bring us all up to date.  I felt I should use the same picture as Newsletter Readers will immediately relate to the High and Low Road Scenarios.

I hypothesized that we either head on up for a Golden Cross of the Nasdaq (50-dma coming up through the 200-dma) a month from now or we trot down again for the Low Road to test support at the 200-dma or lower, the 50-dma.  My good friend Manu reminds me that we already have a Golden Cross with the DJIA, but all the other Market Indexes have still to achieve that significant event.

But first let’s look at the significant TIGHT moves all the Market Indexes have made not only this past week but in the last 20 days, which the picture below presents.  It all started with a bang coming out of the shute on the very first day of the New Year Rally on 01/03/2012.

The High Road Scenario:  I have overlaid a month’s worth of looking forward to depict how the Golden Cross comes to fruition in about a month from now, provided the move essentially continues as we have seen for the past month.   I say that we will need to see some more Kahunas, but given that %B is already in the 90′s that is unlikely, but if we have a small pull back then we could see that extra adrenalin to push %B above the Upper Bollinger Band, i.e., >1.0.

The Low Road Scenario:  This Rally runs out of steam and we head down for some form of correction.  Fortunately, at this stage we are sufficiently above the 200-dma, which up to now was the strong resistance, that we have a decent cushion to give the Bulls an opportunity to find support at that line.  All of this pre-supposes that we don’t get a Major Negative Surprise on the Global Economy front that has plagued this market the last eight months with a 17% correction in such a short timeframe of a matter of a week when most of the damage was done.

Having laid out the two scenarios simply in two charts, the next several charts show you the underlying pieces of the jigsaw and what to look for when a Rally gets a trifle “Peaky”.  Let’s start with two old favorites, the S&P 1500 Pie chart showing %B Buckets and then the %B for where the S&P 1500 %B for the Index sits and the disparity between them.

Note in this next chart where it seemed the Rally had run out of steam with the eight consecutive days stuck between 0.8 and 0.9, it got a second wind and %B for the S&P 1500 is now sitting up a notch higher with a Bucket skip to now reach 0.99 and 0.95 in the last two days.

We haven’t looked at this next chart in quite a while mainly because there has not been this kind of momentum for it to give us clues as to the potential strength of the move.  As you see on the right hand side with the two ringed numbers we are having healthy hits of over 300 stocks in Bucket >1.0…the overbought leaders!  That’s healthy, but as you can see on the one hand we need to see this number rise to >500, it also signifies on the other hand that once reached there is invariably a pause to refresh before moving up again or it is the signal of a Climax Run with a decent correction to follow:

As you would expect, the VIX has gone mighty quiet in the last three days, whereas there was a one day attempt that gave a spike up of about 2.5 points as shown by the white ring, which then immediately fizzled to the lowly 18.28 level which hasn’t been seen since last July.  As we well know this VIX Indicator is the “Go To” one especially as it just hit the lower BB, and so a rebound of some sort is near.  Readers of the Newsletter now know that I have come up with an even better gem in %B x BW which together will give us the early warning signs that the ballgame is changing.  Suffice it to say that any 1-Day change in the VIX which catapults it 3+ points will be a day to sit up and truly heed the shot across the bow.

Then again, another favorite Go To Chart is what is Chaikin’s Money Flow doing in three different timeframes.  You can view this in HGSI, but understand that 34 period portion has yet to prove of value as it has been just 20 days in this fresh portion of the Rally.  Note the major rush of Money Flow for the 13-Period and 21-Period which are at Record Levels.

…And now, last but not least, my favorite at tricky times like these, use the jolly old High Jump Tool only found in the HGSI software.  I have taught you several times of how to use it and if you don’t know, come to our next seminar on March 24 to 26.  I have done the homework for you and have given you that PROVIDED the Rally continues higher we have 50 to 75 points more to go based on past history before this Rally is really long in the tooth:

In summary, I have given you four different items to watch and those who have EdgeRater now have a fifth with %B x BW for the VIX as introduced by my good friend Chris White just a few days ago which I discussed in the Newsletter.  Just let the Market tell you which Road it is on, but these approaches to seeing which way the wind is blowing will help you protect your hard earned Nest Egg well ahead of the big shoe dropping if that is to be our fate.  Give us feedback.

Best Regards, Ian.

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