The Myth of Fair Value

QUESTION: If the metals are not trading at a fair value relative to everything else, then does that not prove they are manipulated?

SN

 

ANSWER: Your problem is the assumption that everything must be trading at some fair value. That is up there with the theory of random walks.  ALL markets trade for periods where they remain well below fair value. That was the entire takeover boom of the 1980s which they also blamed on me because I was advising many of the takeover players. I simply showed these charts back then which show in terms of book value, the Dow Jones bottomed in 1977. The market was grossly undervalued because you could buy a company, sell all its tangible assets, and double or triple your money. Michael Douglas’ famous speech in that movie about “greed” would not even be possible if everything always trade like some mythical robot at fair value. Everything overshoots and undershoots.

The metals are NO DIFFERENT. Every market swings between grossly UNDERVALUED and then grossly OVERVALUED. This is part of the business cycle. If there were no periods of gross undervaluations, there would not be a sudden boom either.

This is what you have to come to grips with. There is such a thing and the business cycle. Our cyclical analysis would not be possible if everything was trading at a flat line of fair value. This nonsense in metals is made up of people who have been wrong, and need to blame someone else. It is like blaming climate cycles on CO2. This notion of fair value is rooted, I hate to tell you, in Marxism, because he too did not understand  the business cycle.

The post The Myth of Fair Value first appeared on Armstrong Economics.

Latest Posts

CBO Issues Dire Forecast for US Debt

The US Congressional Budget Office is warning that the federal deficit has hit a point of no return. It is far too late to cut wasteful government spending. Politicians have [...]
Read more

The Danger of Traveling with Gold

Two men were pulled over while driving on I-20 in Texas, carrying $250,000 worth of gold bars. US law permits and encourages law enforcement to confiscate assets. Civil asset forfeiture [...]
Read more

The Tyranny of Centralized Government

For centuries, the main reason no government has ever survived its own greed for money and power is that whoever is in power at present constantly assumes that this time [...]
Read more