This came precisely on our target. This past week was the tipping point for Europe. The start of the real decline in the euro where mainstream capital begins to question whether negative rates can really reverse or stimulate the economy unfolds after 2016.202. This comes into play March 13/14, 2016. This is not my personal opinion. This is just the modeling. From this target onward, we will begin to see a crisis in confidence. Part of this will, no doubt, be the BREXIT vote in June. It is curious that the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán chose our precise target to effectively throw the gauntlet down against Brussels. He states bluntly, that there is no freedom in Europe if we cannot speak the truth that this is not a refugee crisis, but a migration crisis.

Glen Beck’s piece in the National Review has really pissed off a lot of people. He has taken the “elite” position and claims that Trump is not a conservative. “Politically orphaned by their party, conservatives were forced to either stay home or hold their noses and vote for a progressive Republican,” Beck wrote. Quite honestly, the entire “conservative” position is a bunch of crap, because they have not done anything that is “conservative.” They support every war and the NSA. They have done nothing to “reduce” government. The “conservatives” are just a part of the “special” elite class that looks down upon the rest of us as the great unwashed. Even John McCain voted to tax the internet.

The “conservatives” have bullshitted themselves into thinking they are somehow doing something other than lining their own pockets and protecting the bankers just like the Clintons. Beck says, “If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, there will once again be no opposition to an ever-expanding government. This is a crisis for conservatism.” It has been the crisis in conservatism that has given rise to Trump. David Boaz, vice president of the Cato Institute, claims Trump’s idea of the presidency is that he will ride in on a “white horse… fire the stupid people, hire the best people, and fix everything. He doesn’t talk about policy or working with Congress. He’s effectively vowing to be an American Mussolini, concentrating power in the Trump White House and governing by fiat. It’s a vision to make the last 16 years of executive abuse of power seem modest.” Why work with Congress when they do not work? Should they fire people who have been there through Democrat and Republican eras because they are the unelected bureaucrats? The thought of bringing in more outsiders scares them to death. This system is collapsing and they are too busy lining their pockets to give two shits!

Republicans for Hillary are starting to emerge under the pretense that Donald Trump is not a “conservative,” if you can believe that one. There have been secret meetings behind closed curtains among the Republican elite. The story they will spin is that Trump is not a conservative and his anti-Mexican comments would hurt the party, so they support Hillary instead. That is about as far from the truth as anyone can get. We all know that whatever anyone says while running for president has little chance of ever happening. They said Ronald Reagan was a hawk who would start World War III. The real issue behind the curtain is simply that Trump is an outsider who would threaten their cushy jobs. Hillary is by no means a “conservative,” and on that score she is far worse than anything Trump has had to say. So what is really the story here?

It is simply that Trump is an outsider. I have written many times that John Boehner was a dictator. He threw off anyone who supported Ron Paul from every finance committee. It had nothing to do with the people they represented. His forced resignation was the start of this civil unrest within the Republican Party. But because they have banned mirrors on Capitol Hill, everyone else is the problem and never the members of the “establishment.” I wrote how if Boehner was made dictator he would NEVER shut down any agency or reduce government. This is all about maintaining the status-quo.

So now a split is emerging. Republicans for Hillary are starting to shape up inside the Republican establishment. They will, no doubt, change the rules in the way they rigged them to stop Ron Paul’s name from being introduced because he had won delegates. That means ONLY Trump’s name can be introduced for nomination. We are watching the pretense of a Democracy crumble and fall. What they do not get, even now, is that this is not about Trump. He just appears to be the choice of the “silent majority” as the lesser of two evils. The bankers will be pouring heaps of money on Hillary for they too do not want to be on the side who does not own the White House. That is the HUGE THREAT to the establishment that Trump represents. He would be far more “conservative” than the pretend Republican “conservatives” who have gone along with making government bigger and bigger. This has nothing to do with “conservatives” but everything to do with the special interests who own them. They want Hillary before Trump any day. This is going to make 2016 very interesting for it is a real battle. I suspect they will conjure up anything if not some staged assassination and blame it on a Mexican who they will pay very well. Then, like the Kennedy assassination, pay another to kill him who will conveniently die before trial of natural causes. Hey, they know what works.

Note: Kennedy was against expanding the military establishment and it has been argued that this was the motive to eliminate him. His debate on funding the military created a gold panic in 1960 which revealed his understanding of the issue that the decline in the dollar and ultimately Bretton Woods was caused by military expansion.

Eisenhower’s warning upon leaving office in his Farewell Address on January 17, 1961, was to beware of the “military establishment.”

COMMENT: Hi Martin,

Thought you might be interested in this; we had a local council election yesterday (Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia), and in one of the divisions Donald Trump managed to secure 1% of the vote!

In justifying their vote, one person said, “The system is run by clowns, why not vote for him”, more evidence people are sick of our leaders. Mind you we have a crazy system here where voting is compulsory, so I guess that brings out the jokers.

Love your stuff by the way, I’m a long time follower. Keep up the great work.

A

REPLY: Well if you do not have the money, the establishment will never allow you to run. The special interests own both sides of the ticket. So all we have is Donald Trump who has the money and the guts to at least run. I am just fascinated how politics are degenerating on a global scale. It has become so corrupt that the comment is not so off base. Perhaps it will be Trump or blood in the streets from revolution where the silent majority loses it when they find out their pensions are not there. The question becomes, can the pretense of democracy prevail to allow someone like Trump, regardless of what he says, defeat the establishment? That is a very dark question. We indeed live in interesting times.

COMMENT: Marty, I figured out why you bought the bust of Julius Caesar commissioned by Cleopatra. He was assassinated on the ides of march and that is effectively about Pi day.

…

REPLY: Very good. Yes, even Brutus issued a coin where he proudly declared he killed Caesar on the Ides of March – “EID MAR.” I never noticed before that the entire revolution and the end of the Roman Republic began on pi day. I must confess, I missed that one. As for the bust, yes, it is probably the most important sculpture in existence. It is very interesting that our models also targeted this mid-March period for the start of the decline in CONFIDENCE in the EU. Coincidence? We will find out I suppose.

Julius Caesar Bust by Pollini

Markets oscillate back and forth. I understand for people just coming in to this blog this may look like the Matrix or having to learn a new language. But keep in mind that it may appear to be difficult at first, but like speaking a different language, somehow it just flows out when you are there. Trying to learn a language without the context of having to use it is next to impossible. When you start to actually think in another language, you’ve nailed it. Trading is the same thing. It comes and the light goes on. I was in a hotel in Paris and an elderly Japanese couple were trying to check in and they had nobody to help them. I just stepped in and it just flows naturally.

The key to approaching a new subject matter is do not start at the top, instead, reduce it to its seed. When I began engineering school, about 80% of the class dropped out because the teacher was horrible. I too was considering giving up. He wrongly started at the top and said we would have to know every aspect of that mainframe before we could graduate. I had reams of notes and they made no sense. Then finally after we lost most of the class, he put on the board an and/or circuit. The most simplest invention. A gigabyte is the number of magnets that can be charged plus or minus to store a number expressed in binary. Had that professor started with this base circuit upon which a computer was created, and/or circuit, we would not have lost 80% of the class.

Here too, the most basic thing to start with is the natural ebb and flow of everything within the economy. Absolutely EVERY decline in a free market is followed by a bounce and every rally is followed by a decline. Understand that this the basic motion that drives everything. We personally have our good days and our bad. There is a cycle to everything right down to way we feel. The Romans had their goddess Fortuna (Fortune) who had a cornucopia in one arm (symbol of plenty) and the other hand was on the rudder of ship suggesting she could change your fortune at any moment; a cycle of luck.

Nothing lasts forever; absolutely NOTHING. Starting with that reality that even decline has a bounce and every rally has its correction, you will not buy the high or sell the low allowing you emotions to make those decisions. The vast majority get trapped because the expect whatever trend in motion will stay in motion; huge mistake.

Your greatest opponent in trading is your own emotions. Reduce your trading and your stress will reduce and your profits will rise. Once you grasp that there is a rhythm to the rise and fall of markets, you will shed that novice expectation that the trend will never change. Going with the flow is living with the cycle.

We have to understand our inherent tendencies that people generally are followers. We gain CONFIDENCE when everyone is doing the same thing we often call the madness and delusions of crowds. This is perhaps our hardwired instincts and is difficult to overcome. You have to perhaps almost become passionless. Some would say I had ice water for blood. It was hard to move me for I would just look at the numbers and never get attached to a trade. We can see from this illustration that the Weekly Bullish Reversal in the Dow was 17750 despite the fact we were down at 15500. This “gap” shows just how far you can move without changing trend. This we show in our reports as RISK MANAGEMENT giving the percentage up and down from the current level and this is based upon the Reversals, not some standard formula of a percentage moves equal on both sides. So I have learned to not be too impressed until key points are elected. Very black and white.

To avoid getting slaughtered, try to “feel” the market. Every decline is followed by a rally just as every rally is followed by a decline. Nobody can alter the long-term trend. There are no all powerful market manipulators. The central banks try like hell, but look, with everything Draghi has done, he still constantly has to do more. He cannot win because the economy is far bigger than any manipulator be it government or the NY bankers. You can goose something with the trend but you cannot change a bull market into a bear market or force the economy our of deflation with quantitative easing. Only a “fool” would believe such nonsense.

Do not listen to excuses why analysts are wrong. The market is the ONLY thing that is infallible. If I am wrong, hey, its my opinion. I failed to check something. Only I am to blame. The markets speak to us. It is a challenge to learn how to just listen and never pontificate to the market. They will just laugh back.

The numbers we provide are really good. For year-end 2015, gold held 1045, oil $35, the Euro held 10365, and the Dow closed lower than 2014. The market was speaking to us for it is always the WHOLE. If you focus just on a single market, you will never understand how things function. It does not matter if one market has done what you did not expect. You were wrong in your expectation; not the market.

Each of these main markets (gold, crude, Euro, Dow) warned the first quarter would provide a counter-trend move. Each FAILED completely to close below the numbers we gave and that means WHAT WILL NOT GO DOWN GOES UP. This was not personal opinion. If you going to constantly try to personalize something, you cannot advance. Absolutely no individual can possible be correct from an opinion perspective. You should NEVER trade or invest because anyone said they thought this or that would unfold. There are no demigods of finance.

There is a beat to this whole thing we call the economy. If you are still going to wallow in single market perspective and soak up the fundamental nonsense, then good luck in life. Enjoy what you have now, for you will not have much left in a few years. You have come to the wrong blog if that is your expectation. This is a place to learn and expand your mind, not look for some guru. If your eyes are opening, there is a whole new world to explore just waiting to be discovered. Welcome to how everything really functions. It is a pendulum that swings back and forth between bulls and bears. Life is a learning experience. Enjoy it. Knowledge is the most EXPENSIVE thing we have. Why? It takes mistakes to acquire it.

Everything is connected in nature including how our economy functions. A reader who grasped my piece on how everything is interconnected in markets sent this in. He made the connection with his non-linear observation. Something small can have profound impacts; the essence of Chaos Theory. The reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park changed even the geography of the region.

We each have our role in society and in nature. The rich and the poor are part of the whole. This idea that everyone must be “materially” equal I have noted even violates the Ten Commandments. In nature, one species preys upon another. It may be horrible to watch, but you cannot pass a law to make it all fair and nice in nature. So why do we think we can do that among ourselves?

By attacking the rich, we are undermining the economic system that flourishes for the alternative is only government as the creator of jobs. Disturbing our economic balance has serious implications especially when those who love to seize power over the rest of us great “unwashed” masses in their view, freely admit they are incompetent to forecast anything. So how do they know what they are doing will not destroy the entire economic system? As in negative interest rates.

The wolves were hunted to extinction because farmers saw them as killers. This was a sort of socialism introduced to nature. But that role of everything is vital as an integral part of the whole. People are saying Donald Trump has to be stopped. What they miss is the fact that Trump is not the cause, he is the result of the fact that system is corrupt and he becomes the only alternative to the establishment. But as long as the “establishment” refuses to accept that they are the problem, they will demonize Trump rather than admit they are the cause. Mirror are banned from Washington.

Free Markets prevail in every layer of nature and that includes our society and will cause the rise and fall of nations in ways we cannot imagine. This short video demonstrates that just sometimes nature is the answer for there is an inherent balance even if we do not want to acknowledge it. The Free Markets function in the same manner. We outlawed booze creating prohibition and that funded the Mafia. No matter what we do, there is a ripple effect with unintended consequences.

QUESTION:  Are you more worried about a 1984 esque future or A Brave New World esque future?

ANSWER: Unfortunately, the two go hand in hand. George Orwell simply took the past and laid out what government ALWAYS gravitates toward – total control. We live in a delusion with our brains filled with propaganda. Over the years, I have encountered comments from people who ask, “Why would anyone want to live outside the USA? We are the greatest nation on earth!” I typically reply, “Have you ever traveled outside the country?” The response is telling: “No. What’s the point?”

Perhaps I am the doubting Thomas. I went through Checkpoint Charlie into East Germany before the wall fell because I really wanted to see what was true and what was false. You cannot just accept the indoctrination of society as it is systemic.

So what George Orwell wrote was not pure fiction; no more than “Star Wars” being based on nothing. “Star Wars” is the epic battle between the Republic and Imperialism that dominated the Roman period going into the 1st century AD. They just changed it to planets and updated the swords to light sabers. In the case of Orwell, he took history and postulated what would happen in a modern context. He was only off in terms of technology advancement.

So the bottom line is both will unfold. However, you cannot reach the second without causing pain with the first. With the NSA and socialism, you have seen terrorism used as the excuse to further the control of society so we cannot buy or sell anything ultimately without government approval. The IRS can revoke your passport if it even THINKS you owe more than $50,000 in taxes, fines, or penalties. You cannot travel on a train, plane, or ship, no less stay in a hotel without providing photo ID or in many cases possess a passport. So why do we need a passport, which can be revoked if we owe taxes, to travel? Well, passports were invented by the Romans and appeared in the 3rd century AD when government was in fiscal ruin. If everything was the Roman Empire, what was the purpose of a passport? It was to prove you paid your taxes and were free to travel.

History repeats because the passions of humanity never change from one century to the next. We MUST move closer to absolute oppression in order for the silent majority to get angry and demand change. So until that tipping point is reached, be prepared to lose any concept of human rights you thought you once had. We are not living the “dream” but the nightmare of history. Only when it gets bad enough will we see the change toward the light of the second. Hence, this is why I do what I do, and it is why I say we first must crash and burn. Open your eyes. It is happening. If you understand the pattern, you will survive. If you want to leave a better world for your children, that is ONLY possible by identifying the trend in order to change it. History is our map to the future.

Cheer up! At least the elections are becoming entertaining!