Frank Holmes: Still Plenty of Gas in the Base Metal Rally Tank

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Industrial metals are well on their way to being among the top performers of 2020, supported by red hot demand from China and global supply concerns.

As of today, the MSCI Industrial Metals Index—which tracks the price of copper, nickel, aluminum and more—was up 21.4% year-to-date, just below the index of precious metals, up 21.9%. The broader S&P GSCI, which measures metals as well as agricultural and energy-related commodities, was underwater by nearly 10%.

I believe the rally is only getting started, and we could see ever higher asset prices in 2021, for a couple of significant reasons.

Number one, President-elect Joe Biden plans to make infrastructure one of his top priorities soon after taking office next month. Proposals have the U.S. spending as much as $2 trillion not only to improve roads, bridges and seaports but also beef up the EV sector, add charging stations, convert school buses to zero emissions and more.

Horizon Kinetics: Two Assessments of Energy: ‘The Market’ and Contrarian (fact-based) Investing

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Today we’re talking about energy. Not exclusively, but mostly. Specifically because many of you have been asking about how the fossil fuel divestment movement and green energy initiatives will impact the energy sector – more frequent questions, and more alarmed. Ifwe don’t address this, there might not be the mind space to hear anything else. The fear isthat there will be such a drastic collapse of oil and gas use, or that, as some have suggested, fossil fuel use will be non-existent by the year 2035, that it will create a permanent failure among energystocks; stranded assets, and all of that.

We see the investment reality entirely differently; entirely. The imminent danger is not the collapse of fossil fuel use; the imminent danger is an oil supply shortage and oil price shock. 

Frank Holmes: Dr. Copper Gives the Economy a Clean Bill of Health

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“Dr. Copper,” so named for the metal’s ubiquitous use in many different applications, has been ripping higher since its 52-week low in March, thanks to a number of factors including promising economic data. Copper rose 12.24% in November, its best month in four years. Today it was trading as high as $3.52 per pound, or $7,679 per ton, its highest level since March 2013.

The rally is due in large part to higher demand from manufacturers in the U.S., China and eurozone. For the month of November, the IHS U.S. Manufacturing PMI hit 56.7, up significantly from 53.4 in October. The month-to-month increase was the sharpest since September 2014, according to IHS Markit.

Howard Marks: Prospective Returns Are Low on Everything.’ Howard Marks Outlines Investment Opportunities, Risks

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Barron’s: What’s the biggest question we’ll face when the Covid-19 pandemic winds down?

Howard Marks: The rate at which we’ll return—and the extent to which we’ll return—to our prior behavior. My guess is we’ll go a good bit of the way back to what used to be business, or life, as usual. For the most part, life won’t be fundamentally changed. The things that you or I now would consider out of the question, like going to the movies, a sporting event, or a party, will become commonplace again once the disease is under control.

You’re not a stock picker, but do parts of the stock market look appealing?

On the other hand, when you look at the nontech companies, there are a lot of areas where business models are severely challenged by the pandemic and other trends. If you can find among those companies some where the reality isn’t going to be as bad as the expectation, then you can make money in those holdings. It is all a matter of looking for situations where the merits are underestimated by investors.

Smarter Markets - Robert Friedland: Envisioning commodities graded & traded on how responsibly they're produced

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Billionaire Canadian financier Robert Friedland headlines the inaugural episode of Smarter Markets, and shares a vision of commodities being graded based on how responsibly they were produced with regard to ESG priorities, thus allowing free market price discovery to determine a market premium to reward responsible producers of metals and other commodities which have historically had an adverse environmental impact. 

Robert goes on to share his vision for how a distributed ledger (blockchain) could be used to hold commodity producers to account and assure buyers of commodities that they've received the full and true details of how those commodities were produced.

Also discussed is the metals that will be needed for the proposed energy transiton.

Ronald Stöferle: Inflation special report

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Our special report on inflation is finally out. Inflation is quickly becoming one of the main topics of due to the events which have especially unfolded this year. A whole arranges of topics and factors play into it, and we took the time to unpack them all. 

Every regime has its paradigm. For the past 40 years it has been a deflationary paradigm. Inflation was to be killed and this can be seen in many articles and publications. The symbol was the defeat of stagflation in the early 80s. All of this has now undoubtedly turned to inflation.

Jonathan Boyar: Spotting Investment Opportunities In Out Of Favor Industries

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Over the long run, stock markets are fairly efficient. In the shorter term, however, valuations can go to extremes both on the low and high sides. Investors usually create these anomalies by piling into whatever is currently in vogue and indiscriminately selling whatever is out of favor.

When industries fall out of favor, Wall Street sometimes drives the market cap of companies within that sector far below what an acquirer would pay for the entire company. That leads to buying opportunities for discerning investors with the patience to wait for the industry to right itself. Of course, it’s anyone’s guess when the tide might turn—investors may need to suffer through years of under-performance before these investments eventually pay off. It’s often well worth the wait, however.