To answer all the questions on training courses, it is on the agenda. We have old tapes of training sessions that we will try to blend together with recent video. The number one reason 90% of traders lose money is they are too emotional. You should never bet on fundamentals. To be consistent in trading you need to be technical and have ice water in your veins. You have to be flexible and move with the trend. Inflexibility is not compatible with trading. The more you trade thinking you will limit your risk, the higher the losses will be. You are your own enemy. The entire object here to trade demands CONFIDENCE and that only comes by understanding the trend set in motion globally. Those who buy or sell on the next GDP number are clueless to the international trends in motion.

We are also finishing blending the two WEC conferences together into one DVD, which will be available soon. I have just hired three new senior staff members to get everything on track. Getting the Socrates Platform 1.0 up has taken way too long. One of my original members of our programming team from the nineties is rejoining the firm. I am making a major effort to get all this done ASAP.

“The Greatest Bull Market in History” details the global economy and the sovereign debt crisis. I originally published the book in 1986, which has sold for $3,000 on Ebay (I only have one copy myself). I added 500 pages, half of which are probably illustrations showing the entire world economy and how it is interlinked. We plan to release a second edition of the book later in the year.

While my intentions have been good, the schedule has fallen behind because of so much work and this is not really acceptable. I appreciate everyone’s patience, especially our long-time clients who know the magnitude of this task.

We will be hiring additional support staff and are accepting resumes. With the sheer number of people coming into the site, we have to dramatically increase the staff to cope with the volume.

Yes, we are still on track to go public in 2017 hopefully when everything is up.

The markets have been churning back and forth. The trading range for key support and resistance in the Dow resides at 17406 and 16215. A closing outside that range on a daily basis will pick the direction. In Gold Nearest Futures that is 1237 and 1162. Monday we will have our month-end numbers coming into play which we will address prior to.

COMMENT: Dear Martin,

London 23rd Feb, it is very sad, I cannot find one main stream news outlet that is backing a Brexit. They are all preaching fear, even Boris is not campaigning hard (yet only I hope) and the BBC which is meant to be unbiased is clearly Pro EU.

Is this the sound of all the irrelevant politicians, newsstands, unelected bureaucrats, top civil servants trying to save their jobs. I really hope the pendulum swing is big enough this time, what is the wait otherwise?

Best Wishes,

A

ANSWER: I use to live in London in Kensington. It is my favorite city. It pains me deeply to see what is unfolding. I have many friends in London and use to stop by Margaret Thatcher’s home to say hello. Of course, the mainstream press will be backing the politicians who support staying in the EU. They join with the politicians to keep government intact. I am glad Maggie is not here to witness this. Britain receives no benefit from being inside the EU, yet gets all the garbage. This is exactly what Thatcher was against — the political union. Brussels has not been about an economic union; it is about a political union with central power.

Cameron can claim it’s the best of both worlds to stay in the EU, but Brussels demands the surrender of sovereignty behind closed doors. A little more than 15% of all laws in Britain come from Brussels (see: study of London School of Economics). Yes, there are claims attributing that 84% of laws come from Brussels. That comes from a reply by Alfred Hartenbach Parliamentary Undersecretary of the German Parliament given on April 29, 2005, which was limited to Germany. He stated that from 1998 until 2004, some 18,187 EU regulations and 750 EU directives were adopted in Germany whereas the German Parliament passed, in total, only 1,195 laws (as well as 3,055 “Rechtsverordnungen” – which are like Primary and Secondary legislation). This produced the figure of 84%, which has been bantered about.

Nevertheless, the real clash is not the number of laws, but their subject matter. All it takes is just one law to ruin the economy. Agriculture will certainly be detrimental to farmers, but Brussels wants to outlaw short selling and control the financial markets that are going against them. Their fundamental authoritarian belief is to force the markets to comply with their demands no matter how unreasonable they might be. The European Parliament was pushing to fast-track powers to ban short selling of government debt by early 2011 against the interests of Britain as it would end a free market system. Clearly, the thinking process in Brussels is anti-democratic in every step of the way. This notion of outlawing short selling to stop the markets declining against them is preposterous. It would only fester and destroy London as a financial hub in the world economy. The demise of the London Stock Exchange cannot be ruled out come 2025. That will be 224 years from its founding in 1801. At the very least, we will see a major upheaval and things will change dramatically for them.

More importantly, Britain lost in the EU courts in its challenge to Brussels controlling the financial markets in London, right on schedule, in January 2014. The European court held: “The power of the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) to adopt emergency measures on the financial markets of the Member States in order to regulate or prohibit short selling is compatible with EU law … As all the pleas in law relied on by the United Kingdom have been rejected, the court dismisses the action in its entirety.”

The London Royal Exchange was officially opened on January 23, 1571, by Queen Elizabeth I whose charter she granted to Thomas Gresham.  Sadly, 51.6 x 8.6 = 443.76 years. That brought us to 2014. Therefore, the free markets have peaked and this too is part of the declining cycle we find ourselves in. It appears that 2025 will be the first opportunity for a bottom. This peak in our economic freedom means that not only has liquidity declined since then rather sharply, but we are in a bear market for our freedom that will spread to politics. Brussels is highly dangerous for as the markets move against them, we can expect only harsh Draconian actions that will try to control the markets rather than reform them. This is how empires, nations, and city-states collapse.

I believe that a BREXIT is close, but the vote will be rigged to ensure there will be no exit. This could be why our model is quite bearish on Britain. It may be simply going down with the ship. With German and French elections coming up, you have a rising trend of discontent among the silent majority. The press can keep trying to keep a lid on it by supporting the establishment but eventually reality catches up. Unfortunately, that means it does not end nicely.

COMMENT: Marty; it is clear that the IMF is reading your forecasts. No such agency has the power to provide any economic forecast whatsoever. The IMF is starting to mimic your forecasts since you said China would decline into 2020 when no one else said that and now Lagarde says China will be a drag on the world economy for the next three years. Whatever you may think, they do pay attention to you.

AC

REPLY: I really do not know. I did meet with a former board member of the IMF on my trip to Greece last year. We did have some frank discussions. I do know that just about every intelligence agency reads our work since they regard the model as some sort of national security from an economic weapon perspective. I believe where they go wrong is assuming you can press a button and make the world go on life-support at any given moment. Granted, there are some aspects I deem as dangerous for, like all things,, there can be crazy people in power who think they can mess with the balance of things. You CANNOT manipulate any market against its trend and expect it to be sustained. That is illustrated by the 1998 silver manipulation where silver rallied and gold declined with the rest of commodities into the 1999 low. I agree, given government agencies are notorious for their wrong forecasts, it is curious that the IMF seems to be departing from their traditional script. On the other hand, they may be touting what we say and spinning it to justify why they should get more power since individual governments are wrong. Hard to say what is behind this posture.

I believe that Donald Trump is way off base here because he is not a programmer. If Apple creates a backdoor for the FBI in its phones then hackers will also find that back door and all security will be lost. I applaud Apple to standing up to the government. They are a bunch of pinheads and it is way beyond their mental capacity to comprehend what they are even demanding. Here is Apple’s letter to their customers.

Both sides are bracing for the legal battle of the decade and will probably end up in the Supreme Court. There is also the possibility that Congress will act irresponsibly and demand Apple surrender all encryption, which would devastate technology moving forward. It would be one major reason that could cause the USA to lose its technology edge and force companies to leave. This could become the very issue that assists the decline and fall of the West and the rise of Asia after 2020.

Asian stocks returned some of yesterdays gains as nerves and another turn in the oil price weighs on sentiment. Renimbi was fixed at its lowest level since early January in covered by a hefty cash injection. Stan Charter shares were down 3% after releasing weak earnings. All core markets drifted to close around the 1% mark but it was not until we saw the German confidence number (IFO) did the equity selling really take effect. By lunchtime in London the DAX, CAC and FTSE were trading around 1% lower with oil then lower by 3%.

We are hearing more details on how oil and other commodities are starting to bite on more than just mining and energy companies directly. The market heard from big banks today (JPM Investor Day) and that they are increasing their  loss provision and/or concerns that are directly related to the price of oil. Bank shares are obviously (JPM (-3.5%), BoAM (-3%) lower and selling-off on the uncertainty and especially as TWI closes around the $31 mark given the Saudi oil minister declaring parties will NOT cut production. We did see a break recently in the correlation between stocks and oil. The question we hear from dealers now is, “Is that trade relationship back-on?” The DOW, S+P and NASDAQ all close down 1%. It now looks like the markets are finally waking-up to the idea that we are in fresh ground. Old relationships are starting to be questioned and market players are questioning who is at risk if oil remains around the $30 mark for longer than previously thought!

Again, with the uncertainty back in markets the flight to quality returned to the precious metals and Fixed-Income markets. We saw a strong $15 (1.2%) rally in the price of gold taking us back up to $1224 level.

In the US Treasury market the flight to quality has seen a rally across the curve with 10’s now trading around the 1.73% level having been above 1.805% earlier in the day. Traders were telling us this is a Double Bottom and are comparing the relationship with the S+P but you know our call for these markets! 10yr German bunds closed 0.18% taking our TY/RX spread to +155bp. Peripherals closed as follows: Italy 10’s 1.53% (+1bp), Greece 10’s 10.26% (-2bp), Turkey 10.50% (-2bp) and finally UK 10yr Gilt closed 1.43% (+4bp).
Interesting we saw FTSE -1.25% and Gilts also gaining 4bp (lower price)!

GBP was again the talk of the city as it gave-up yet another 1% (against the USD) in todays trading. Initially, it was holding Mondays close (1.415) but BREXIT concerns continue to dominate the UK news and that is weighing on prices taking us back to the psychological 1.40 handle. The Euro is holding the 1.10 level despite a brief intraday break but this is building more sentiment hype than technical analysis.

Our writings on the end of cash were picked up in one of the last really independent newspapers in Germany: the Fuldaer Zeitung. Slowly, the word is getting out. The more people understand the trend, the greater the chances we can push the tree in the right direction when it falls.

20160223-TZ- – Fuldaer Zeitung – Thema – pag 3

Some people have asked if I am a Republican or Democrat/ Labour or Tory. Both political sides are wrong. They pander to their core constituents using the social issues to get everyone wound-up, but when it comes to economics; well there is no real difference. Neither side will reform or downsize government. Their solution will be as Christine Lagarde’s: grab more and more until it works for them.

I have been asked if I really think Trump will be the man to save us. No. I do not believe anyone can do that at this late point in history. Trump’s reading of Al Wilson’s song “The Snake” is typical and part of the cycle. The state sovereign debt crisis of the mid-19th century was set in motion by Andrew Jackson’s war on the Bank of the United States because they funded his opponents. Jackson then destroyed the central bank, which set off the Age of Broken Banknotes. The Panic of 1837 became the Depression of the 1840s, and then states issued bonds to try to bailout their banks and then they defaulted. To this date, the Bank of England still has on its books bonds issued by States that they never paid on.

The economic pressures of that period produced the very same human response to immigration. Then it was the Irish. The movement against immigrants erupted into gun battles on the streets of Philadelphia in 1844 known as the Nativism Riots. These “native” Americans (white original immigrants) were against all immigrants as they felt they were taking their jobs. So Trump’s reading of “The Snake” is PRECISELY in line with history and is reflecting the very issue that is argued for the BREXIT by one side: STOP THE MIGRANTS.

The point is, quite frankly, that history repeats. We are in the midst of an economic decline. The standard of living is declining as government expands regardless of whom has been behind the uptrend since both sides have contributed to our demise as we approach our date with reality. Europeans hate Trump because they focus on some of his hardline statements and the fact that career politicians there see him as a very dangerous consequence because the same trend is emerging in Europe — oust the career politicians. But in the USA, the more Trump stands up against the career politicians, the louder his cheers. Meanwhile, the bankers are scared to death of both Trump and Bernie Sanders and see them as dangerous. Obviously, if they do not OWN the political candidate, he might actually prosecute them for crimes.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has come out in support of BREXIT. On the other side, you have British Prime Minister David Cameron making his pitch to remain within the European Union, claiming the UK could “have the best of both worlds” if it voted to remain in the bloc. We should expect the pound to decline as part of an official attack to convince people to stay in the EU. Then they will argue that the decline in the pound is proof that Britain should stay with a sinking ship.

So the point is this: Trump’s reading of “The Snake” is a sign of the times. He is tapping into the very same human response that ALWAYS unfolds during major economic declines. Merkel’s decision to open the floodgates for immigration occurred at EXACTLY the wrong time in the economic cycle. In a bull market, nobody would have noticed. Did it create the cycle? No. The downtrend was set in motion as our forecasts were laid out. Doing what she did was stupid and counter-trend so it was interpreted as a disaster.

Now, with hard times upon us, the Islamic immigrants will compete for jobs, take state assistance, and only cause the resentment to rise among those who see their living standards diminish. This is simply part of the War Cycle, which turned up in 2014 and nothing more. I have stated countless times that our correlation of all global trends demonstrates that war never comes when everyone is “fat and happy.” Turn down the economy and it all comes unraveled.

Trump’s reading of “The Snake” is feeding into the heat of the moment. It is perfect timing regardless of which side you are on for we just may be influenced by the entire cycle heading into the coming storm. So to me it is not abnormal; it is a sign that the cycle is indeed unfolding. I need not take sides. To me, this is indicative and confirmation of the trend in motion.

Can Trump prevent our demise? No. He probably does not realize the extent of the risk we face. People should by no means focus on Trump as an individual, for they will miss the entire trend. He is a symptom of the times and not the trendsetter himself. I have more faith in Trump insofar as he is NOT a career politician and that leaves a glimmer of hope that when he is wrong, he will change course. Career politicians will NEVER do that because they are incapable of admitting to mistake. That is simply what they are told in Politics 101.

Cameron wanting to stay in the EU when it is a total disaster is indicative of someone who puts politics before his own country. If Britain votes to leave, and they will probably rig that vote as they did the Scottish Vote to separate from the UK, Europe will see a contagion of massive proportions and the EU will collapse because they tried to make this a political United States of Europe rather than an economic union. My guess: Cameron and the EU will rig any BREXIT vote to ensure it remains with the sinking ship. If Britain leaves, the EU collapses.

Christine Lagarde Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund spoke at the IMF Arab Fiscal Forum: Fiscal Policy and Growth in Abu Dhabi on February 22, 2016. Her message was clear – forget downsizing government or reforming anything, just raise taxes.  She opened the conference saying:

“This event is taking place at a pivotal moment not only for this region but for many other countries that have seen fiscal issues rise to the top of their policy agendas.

Or, to be more precise, it is taxation that has risen to the agenda in many countries. If you wonder why this issue has become so important, let me assure you that this is nothing new in the history of mankind!”

Lagarde is calling for international taxation. She has threatened every tax haven with being sanctioned and removed from the Swift System unless they give up everyone. She has done far more damage to the world economy than any previous director. We have anemic economic growth and rising tax enforcement depriving us of our free society and the free movement of people as well as capital. If you owe taxes, government simply revokes your passport precisely as passports began to prove you owed the state nothing and could travel. She concluded her address and called for global tax enforcement and raising taxes; not reforming government in the least. She said:

“Political economy…proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people…and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services.”

My main message today is this: creating successful 21^st-century economies requires robust government revenues and an international tax system that works for everybody. These ingredients are essential for growth, fairness, and development.

They provide the fertile ground for the prosperity of nations. And we at the IMF are ready to play our part for the benefit of our membership.”

Focus on what she said: “robust government revenues and an international tax system.” Those who feared a one-world government may be incorrect insofar as politicians will never surrender all power to some central body. But the one-world government Lagarde is trying to create is a one-world tax authority. That is why she remained at the IMF. Freedom is but a fleeting dream that vanishes day by day before our eyes.

Just open your eyes before you cannot. EVERY career politician is against Donald Trump. Why? They are afraid he may end their gravy train. It does not matter who they are left or right; career politicians are against Trump. I would not doubt some plot to stop him.

Note: (Our CEO Ashley Warren is at the conference)