Name: MHF Trader

Email:

Web Site: http://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/

Twitter: MadHedgFndTradr

Bio: The Mad hedge Fund Trader acquired a taste for all things international by jumping freight trains from Los Angeles to Montreal to visit the Expo 67 world’s fair, and then hitch hiking back. A 1968 a backpack trip around Europe and Africa caught him up in the student revolution in Paris, the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the tail end of the Algerian civil war. The Mad Hedge Fund Trader graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in Biochemistry and a minor in Mathematics in 1974. He moved to Tokyo, Japan to join Dai Nana Securities as a research analyst of Japanese companies, becoming fluent in Japanese. In 1976 he was appointed the Tokyo correspondent for The Economist magazine and the Financial Times. For the next seven years he published thousands of articles about the economies, companies, and leaders of every country in Asia. He was one of the first American correspondents to cover China during the cultural revolution. He reported on the American attempt to climb Mount Everest and guerilla wars throughout Southeast Asia. The major figures he interviewed included China’s Premier Deng Xiaoping, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, the UK’s Margaret Thatcher, the PLO’s Yassir Arafat, and of course President Ronald Reagan. In 1982 The Mad Hedge Fund Trader moved to New York as the US editor of a major business magazine. As a member of the White House Press Corps he covered the early years of the Reagan administration. In 1983 he was hired by a top investment bank to build a new division in international equities. In 1985 he was promoted to vice president and transferred to London to head up the sales and trading of Japanese equity derivatives in Europe and the Middle East. In 1989 The Mad Hedge Fund Trader was appointed a director of the Swiss Bank Corp responsible for its then vast portfolio of Japanese equity derivatives. A year later he left to set up the first ever dedicated international hedge fund, which became a top performer in the industry. In 1999 The Mad Hedge Fund Trader sold his hedge fund to concentrate on managing his personal investments. He focused on natural gas exploration and development in Texas and Colorado, as well as other commodities. Seeing the incredible inefficiencies and severe mispricing offered by the popping of multiple bubbles during the Great Crash of 2008, and missing the adrenaline of the marketplace, he returned to active hedge fund management. In his free time, The Mad Hedge Fund Trader climbs mountains, does long distance backpacks, practices karate, performs aerobatics in antique aircraft, collects vintages wines, reads the Japanese classics, and engages in a wide variety of public service and philanthropic activities. His career has taken him up to 20,000 feet on Mount Everest, to the edge of space at 90,000 feet in the Cockpit of a MIG-25, and to the depths of a sunken Japanese fleet in the Truk Lagoon. Why they call him "mad" he will never understand. You can learn more about the Mad Hedge Fund Trader by visiting his website at www.madhedgefundtrader.com


Posts by MHF Trader:

    The True Cost of Oil

    Written by MHF Trader
    October 17th, 2011 at 11:25 pm

    I received some questions last week on my recent solar pieces as to whether I minded paying more money for “green” power. My answer is “hell no,” and I’ll tell you why. My annual electric bill comes to $1,500 a year. Since the California power authorities have set a goal of 33% alternative energy sources by 2020, PG&E (PGE) has the most aggressive green energy program in the country (click herefor “The Solar Boom in California”). More expensive solar, wind, geothermal, and biodiesel power sources mean that my electric bill may rise by $150-$300 a year.

    Now let’s combine my electricity and gasoline bills. Driving 15,000 miles a year, my current gasoline engine powered car uses 750 gallons a year, which at $4/gallon for gas costs me $3,000/year. So my annual power/gasoline bill is $4,500. My new all electric Nissan Leaf (NSANY) will cost me $180/year to cover the same distance (click here for “Getting Something for Nothing”). Even if my power bill goes up 20%, as it eventually will, thanks to the Leaf, my THE total plunges to $1,980, down 56%.

    There is an additional sweetener, which I’m not even counting. I also spend $1,000/year on maintenance on my old car, including tune ups and oil changes. The Nissan Leaf will cost me nothing, as there are no oil changes or tune ups, and my engine drops from using 400 overcooked parts to just five. We’re basically talking tires rotations only for the first 100,000 miles.

    There is a further enormous pay off down the road. We are currently spending $100 billion a year in cash up front fighting our wars in the Middle East, or $273 million a day! Add to that another $200 billion in back end costs, including wear and tear on capital equipment, and lifetime medical care for 3 million veterans, some of whom are severely torn up.

    We import 9.1 million barrels of oil each day, or 3.3 billion barrels a year, worth $270 billion at $82/barrel. Some 2 million b/d, or 730 million barrels/year worth $60 billion comes from the Middle East. That means we are paying a de facto tax which amounts to $136/barrel, taking the true price for Saudi crude up to a staggering $219/barrel!

    We are literally spending $100 billion extra to buy $60 billion worth of oil, and that’s not counting the lives lost. Even worse, all of the new growth in Middle Eastern oil exports is to China, so we are now spending this money to assure their supplies more than ours. Only a government could come up with such an idiotic plan.

    There is another factor to count in. Anyone in the oil industry will tell you that, of the current $82 price for crude, $30 is a risk premium driven by fears of instability in the Middle East. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, every available tanker, and thousands of rail cars are all chocked full with unwanted oil. This is why prices remain high.

    The International Energy Agency says the world is now using 87 million b/d, or 32 billion barrels a year worth $2.6 trillion. This means that the risk premium is costing global consumers $950 billion/year. If we abandon that oil source, the risk premium should fall substantially, or disappear completely. What instability there becomes China’s headache, not ours.

    If enough of the country converts to alternatives and adopts major conservation measures, then we can quit importing oil from that violent part of the world.  No more sending our president to bow and shake hands with King Abdullah. Oil prices would fall, our military budget would drop, the federal budget deficit would shrink, and our taxes would likely get cut.

    One Leaf shrinks demand for 750 gallons of gasoline, or 1,500 gallons of oil per year. That means that we need 20.4 million Leafs on the road to eliminate the need for the 2 million barrels/day we are importing from the Middle East. The Department of Energy has provided a $1.6 billion loan to build a Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee that will pump out 250,000 Leafs a year by end 2012. Add that to the million Volts, Tesla S-1’s, Mitsubishi iMiEV’s, and other electric cars  hitting the market in the next few years. Also taking a bite out of our oil consumption are the 1 million hybrids now on the road to be joined by a second million in the next two years. That goal is not so far off.

    Yes, these are simplistic, back of the envelop calculations that don’t take into account other national security considerations, or our presence on the global stage. But these numbers show that even a modest conversion to alternatives can have an outsized impact on the bigger picture.

    By the way, please don’t tell ExxonMobile (XOM) or BP (BP) I told you this. They get 80% of their earnings from importing oil to the US. I don’t want to get a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

    Enjoy the Dollar Rally While it Lasts

    Written by MHF Trader
    October 13th, 2011 at 10:43 pm

    Any trader will tell you the trend is your friend, and the overwhelming direction for the US dollar for the last 220 years has been down.

    Our first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, found himself constantly embroiled in sex scandals. Take a ten dollar bill out of your wallet and you’re looking at a world class swordsman of the first order. When he wasn’t fighting scandalous accusations in the press and the courts, he spent much of his six years in office orchestrating a rescue of our new currency, the US dollar.

    Winning the Revolutionary War bankrupted the young United States, draining it of resources and leaving it with huge debts. Hamilton settled many of these by giving creditors notes exchangeable for then worthless Indian land west of the Appalachians. As soon as the ink was dry on these promissory notes, they traded in the secondary market for as low as 25% of face value, beginning a centuries long government tradition of stiffing its lenders, a practice that continues to this day. My unfortunate ancestors took him up on his offer, the end result being that I am now writing this letter to you from California—and am part Indian.

    It all ended in tears for Hamilton, who, misjudging former Vice President Aaron Burr’s intentions in a New Jersey duel, ended up with a bullet in his back that severed his spinal cord. Cheney, eat your heart out.

    Since Bloomberg machines weren’t around in 1790, we have to rely on alternative valuation measures for the dollar then, like purchasing power parity, and the value of goods priced in gold. A chart of this data shows an undeniable permanent downtrend, which greatly accelerates after 1933 when FDR banned private ownership of gold and devalued the dollar.

    Today, going short the currency of the world’s largest borrower, running the greatest trade and current account deficits in history, with a diminishing long term growth rate is a no brainer. But once it became every hedge fund trader’s free lunch, and positions became so lopsided against the buck, a reversal was inevitable. We seem to be solidly in one of those periodic corrections, which began with the big “RISK OFF” trade on April 29, and could continue for months or years.

    The euro has its own particular problems, with the cost of a generous social safety net sending EC budget deficits careening. Use this strength in the greenback to scale into core long positions in the currencies of countries that are major commodity exporters, boast rising trade and current account surpluses, and possess small consuming populations. I’m talking about the Canadian dollar (FXC), the Australian dollar (FXA), and the New Zealand dollar (BNZ), all of which will eventually hit parity with the greenback. Think of these as emerging markets where they speak English, best played through the local currencies. For a sleeper, buy the Chinese Yuan ETF (CYB) for your back book. A major revaluation by the Middle Kingdom is just a matter of time.

    I’m sure that if Alexander Hamilton were alive today, he would counsel our modern Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, to talk the dollar up, but to do everything he could to undermine the buck behind the scenes, thus over time depreciating our national debt down to nothing through a stealth devaluation. Given Geithner’s performance so far, I’d say he studied his history well. Hamilton must be smiling from the grave.

    The Ultra Bull Argument for Gold

    Written by MHF Trader
    October 12th, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    I am constantly barraged with emails from gold bugs who passionately argue that their beloved metal is trading at a tiny fraction of its true value, and that the barbaric relic is really worth $5,000, $10,000, or even $50,000 an ounce (GLD). They claim the move in the yellow metal we are seeing is only the beginning of a 30 fold rise in prices similar to what we saw from 1972 to 1979, when it leapt from $32 to $950.

    So when the chart below popped up in my in-box showing the gold backing of the US monetary base, I felt obligated to pass it on to you to illustrate one of the intellectual arguments these people are using. To match the 1936 monetary value peak, when the monetary base was collapsing, and the double top in 1979 when gold futures first tickled $950, this precious metal has to increase in value by eight times, or to $9,600 an ounce.

    I am long term bullish on gold, other precious metals, and virtually all commodities for that matter. But I am not that bullish. It makes my own three year $2,300 prediction positively wimp-like by comparison. The seven year spike up in prices we saw in the seventies, which found me in a very long line in Johannesburg, South ASfrica to unload my own krugerands in 1979, was triggered by a number of one off events that will never be repeated.

    Some 40 years of demand was unleashed when Richard Nixon took the US off the gold standard and decriminalized private ownership in 1972. Inflation then peaked around 20%. Newly enriched sellers of oil had a strong historical affinity with gold. South Africa, the world’s largest gold producer, was then a boycotted international pariah and teetering on the edge of disaster. We are nowhere near the same geopolitical neighborhood today, and hence my more subdued forecast. But then again, I could be wrong.

    You may have noticed that I have not been doing much trading in gold or the other precious metals lately. That is because they are still working off an extremely overbought condition. Given some time, and a nice little dip in prices, and I’ll be back there in a heartbeat. You’ll be the first to know when that happens.

    Play China’s Yuan From the Long Side

    Written by MHF Trader
    October 11th, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    Any doubts that China’s Yuan is a huge screaming buy should have been dispelled when news came out that it had displaced Germany as the world’s largest exporter.

    The Middle Kingdom shipped $1.2 trillion in goods in 2009, compared to only $1.1 trillion for The Fatherland. The US has not held the top spot since 2003. China’s surging exports of electrical machinery, power generation equipment, clothes, and steel were a major contributor. German exports were mired down by lackluster economic recovery in the EC, which has also been a major factor behind the weak euro. Sales of luxury Mercedes and BMW cars, machinery, and chemicals have plummeted.

    Eight back-to-back interest rate rises for the Yuan, and a constant snugging of bank reserve requirements by the People’s Bank of China, have stiffened the backbone of the Middle Kingdom’s currency even further. That is the price of allowing the Federal Reserve to set China’s monetary policy via a fixed Yuan exchange rate. It is certain that Obama’s stimulus program is reviving China’s economy more than our own.

    The last really big currency realignment was a series of devaluations that took the Yuan down from a high of 1.50 to the dollar in 1980. By the mid-nineties, it had depreciated by 84%. The goal was to make exports more competitive. The Chinese succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

    There is absolutely no way that the fixed rate regime can continue, and there are only two possible outcomes. An artificially low Yuan has to eventually cause the country’s inflation rate to explode. Or a future global economic recovery causes Chinese exports to balloon to politically intolerable levels. Either case forces a revaluation.

    Of course timing is everything. It’s tough to know how many sticks it takes to break a camel’s back. Talk to senior officials at the People’s Bank of China, and they’ll tell you they still need a weak currency to develop their impoverished economy. Per capita income is still at only $6,000, less than a tenth of that of the US. But that is up a lot from a mere $100 in 1978.

    Talk to senior US Treasury officials, and they’ll tell you they are amazed that the Chinese peg has lasted this long. How many exports will it take to break it? $1.5 trillion, $2 trillion, $2.5 trillion? It’s anyone’s guess.

    One thing is certain. A free floating Yuan would be at least 50% higher than it is today, and possibly 100%. In fact, the desire to prevent foreign hedge funds from making a killing in the market is a not a small element in Beijing’s thinking.

    The Chinese Central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, says he won’t entertain a revaluation for the foreseeable future. The Americans say they need it tomorrow. To me that means about six months. Buy the Yuan ETF, the (CYB). Just think of it as an ETF with an attached lottery ticket. If the Chinese continue to stonewall, you will get the token 3%-4% annual revaluation they are thought to tolerate. Double that with margin, and your yield rises to 6%-10%, not bad in this low yielding world. Since the chance of the Chinese devaluing is nil, that beats the hell out of the zero interest rates you now get with T-bills.

    If they cave, then you could be in for a home run.

    The Tax Rate Fallacy

    Written by MHF Trader
    October 10th, 2011 at 8:51 pm

    When anyone starts lecturing you that the US has the highest tax rate in the industrialized world, just turn around, walk away, and pretend you never heard them. This person is either ignorant about this country’s taxation system, or is deliberately trying to deceive or mislead you.

    According to a report released by the Internal Revenue Service, America’s tax collection agency, the top 400 individual tax returns filed in 2009 reported an average gross income of $358 million each. The average amount of tax paid by these individuals came to under 17%, less than half the maximum Federal rate of 35%, which kicks in on annual income over $372,950 (click here for the 2009 tax tables). This explains why Warren Buffet pays a much lower tax rate than his secretary. It really is true that in America, only the poor people pay taxes.

    Look at any international comparison of taxes to GDP, and one can always find the United States at the bottom of the table. Low American taxes are one of the main reasons why I moved my company here from England 15 years ago, fleeing their hellacious then 15% VAT tax. Take a look at the Fortune 500, where one third of the largest companies pay no tax at all, and many that dominate the top of the list, like the oil majors, pay only token amounts. In 2010, General Electric (GE), one of the most profitable companies in the world, paid a 3% tax rate. However, if any politician wants to pander to voters during election time on a tax cutting platform he will only bluster on about “tax rates”, not actual taxes paid.

    What the US has that other countries lack is the 100,000 pages of the Internal Revenue Code. It is a 98 year accumulation of deductions, accelerated depreciation rates, tax credits, and other tax breaks that are the end product of intensive lobbying efforts and bribes by special interest groups, corporations, unions, and even religious groups. Take a look at the oil industry again. The oil depletion allowance permits drillers to deduct a substantial portion of the cost of a new well in the first year (click here for its fascinating history), while spreading the income over the extended life of the well. When I first got into the oil and gas business a decade ago, after reading the relevant sections of the tax code, I couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t drilling for Texas tea.

    I have a very simple solution to the country’s budget deficit problem. Hit the reset button. Eliminate the Internal Revenue Code. Just set it on fire. Keep the existing progressive, hockey stick tax rates on income, but eliminate all deductions. And I mean everything; deductions for dependents, home mortgage interest, medical expenses, charitable contributions, the works. There are no sacred cows. My revised Form 1040 would have only three lines on it:

    Income
    Tax Rate
    Tax Due

     

    The budget deficit would disappear overnight. Government spending would shrink dramatically, because you could ditch most of the 100,000 who work for the IRS. Some 1.3 million auditors and CPA’s would have to hit the road in search of new work too. The amount of money that is wasted on tax collection in this country is truly staggering. This is not some pie in the sky concept. This is how taxation already works in most countries, and they seem to get along just fine.

    In fact, the whole scheme might even pay for itself.

    Who is Ben Bernanke?

    Written by MHF Trader
    October 4th, 2011 at 3:11 pm

    Since nothing less than the fate of the free world depends on the judgment of Ben Bernanke these days, I thought I’d touch base with David Wessel, the Wall Street Journal economics editor, who has just published In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic.

    I doubted David could tell me anything more about the former Princeton professor I didn’t already know. I couldn’t have been more wrong, as David gave me some fascinating insights into the inner soul of our much vaunted Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

    Bernanke was the smartest kid in rural Dillon, South Carolina, who, through a series of improbable accidents, and intervention by a local black civil rights leader, ended up at Harvard. He built his career on studying the Great Depression, then the closest thing to paleontology economics had to offer, a field focused so distantly on the past that it was irrelevant. Bernanke took over the Fed when Greenspan was considered a rock star, inhaling his libertarian, free-market, Ayn Rand inspired philosophy in great giant gulps.

    Within a year, the economy suddenly transported itself back to the Jurassic Age, and the landscape was overrun with T-Rex’s and Brontesauri. He tried to stop the panic 150 different ways, 125 of which were terrible ideas, the remaining 25 saving us from the Great Depression II. This is why unemployment is now only 9.1%, instead of 25%.

    The Fed governor is naturally a very shy and withdrawn person, and would have been quite happy limiting his political career to the Princeton, NJ school board. To rebuild confidence, he took his campaign to the masses, attending town hall meetings and pressing the flesh like a campaigning first term congressman.

    The price tag for Ben’s success has been large, with the Fed balance sheet exploding from $800 million to $2.7 trillion, solely on his signature. The true cost of the financial crisis won’t be known for a decade or more. The biggest risk is that we grow complacent, having pulled back from the brink, and let desperately needed reforms of the financial system and the rebuilding of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac slide. This is already starting to happen.

    How Bernanke unwinds this bubble will define his legacy. Too soon, and we go back into a real depression. Too late, and hyperinflation hits. That’s when we find out who Ben Bernanke really is.

    Why Has Gold Turned Into Paper

    Written by MHF Trader
    October 3rd, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    One of the most amazing things that has happened in the global capital markets in the past month is that gold and silver have turned into equities. You know, those precious metals that are supposed to be a store of value and a safe haven during troubled times? They have morphed overnight from hard assets into paper ones, with the barbarous relic nosediving $392 from $1,922, or 20%, in less than four weeks, while the white metal is off  nearly $24, or 48% from its April $49.90 top.

    It is clear what is happening here. The biggest hedged funds, like the one run by the subprime hero, John Paulson, have gotten into big trouble with ill-advised holdings in financials and are unloading everything else to meet margin calls and expected redemptions. What are their largest remaining profitable positions? Gold and silver.

    It’s no good reminding you all that I warned this was going to happen in my piece “Gold: I Told You So” at http://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/september-27-2011-2.html . I was certain that once the “RISK OFF” trade hit, there would be no place to hide and everything would go down together. If you’re not out now, the damage is already done. At least my Macro Millionaire followers managed to coin it on the downside with some well-timed positions in out of the money puts, which they have already covered profitably.

    That’s why the price action has been like a flash fire in a movie theater, frying the gold bugs in the process. The good news in all of this is that a big part of the drop is behind us. The bad news is that we may have three more months of such liquidations before we reach the bottom. Note to Indian subscribers: Will more of you please get married and provide some end user support under the distressed yellow metal? We are in the midst of the fabled Indian wedding season after all.

    For those who wish to participate in Macro Millionaire, my highly innovative and successful trade mentoring program, please email John Thomas directly at madhedgefundtrader@yahoo.com . Please put “Macro Millionaire” in the subject line, as we are getting buried in emails.

    The Great Copper Crash of 2012

    Written by MHF Trader
    September 30th, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    When Dr. Copper (CU), the only commodity with a PhD in economics, suddenly collapses from a heart attack, risk takers everywhere have to sit up and take notice. Since the July top, the red metal has collapsed a shocking 31%.

    So called because of its uncanny ability to predict the future of the global economy, copper is warning of dire things to come. The price drop suggests that the great Chinese economic miracle is coming to an end, or is at least facing a substantial slowdown. This dark view is further confirmed by the weakness in the Shanghai index ($SSEC) which plumbed new depths this week. Will China permabear, Jim Chanos, finally get his dream come true?

    It’s a little more complicated than that. Copper is no longer the metal it once was. Because of the lack of a consumer banking system in the Middle Kingdom, individuals are now hoarding 100 pound copper bars and posting them as collateral for loans. Get any weakness of the kind we have seen over the past two week, and lenders panic, dumping their collateral for cash.

    The high frequency traders are now in there in force, whipping around prices and creating unprecedented volatility. You can see this also in gold, silver, oil, coal, platinum, and palladium. Notice how they seem to be running the movie on fast forward everywhere these days? Because of this, we could now be seeing an overshoot on the downside in copper which may never actually materialize to this extreme in equities or other asset classes.

    Watch Dr. Copper closely. At the first sign of any sustained strength, you should load up on long dated calls for Freeport McMoRan (FCX), the world’s largest producer, which also has been similarly decimated.

    Take the Free Put on Berkshire Stock

    Written by MHF Trader
    September 29th, 2011 at 8:03 pm

    Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, is nothing if not clever. By offering to buy back his holding company’s stock, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), for the first time in history, he is in effect offering investors a free put. And the way he is going about this, it will not cost him a penny.

    This is no idle threat. Berkshire boasts a gargantuan $77 billion in cash and equivalents on the balance sheet. Buffett prefers to keep at least $20 billion in cash at all times in case a prospective elephant comes into his sites. That still leaves $57 billion for stock buy backs in a company with a market cap of $165 billion. Buffet has said that he will pay no more than a premium of 10% over book value.

    Unlike you and I, Buffett likes to buy whole companies instead of shares in listed firms. That’s how he swallowed whole the railroad, Burlington Northern, last year for $40 billion. The company is believed to have doubled in value since then, powered by a massive cash flow.

    Buffett’s last try at bottom picking in 2008 worked out fairly well, when he bought $50 billion worth of  blue chip stocks like Goldman Sachs (GS), General Electric (GE), and Dow Chemical (DD) for pennies on the dollar. His timing may be early from the point of view of shorter term traders like myself, but they usually turn out well.

    Although many describe Berkshire Hathaway as a quasi-index fund, Buffett’s cumulative return since 1964 is 500,000%. Buying one of the world’s best quality, cash flow rich portfolios run by the world’s smartest investor at a big discount with a free put sounds like a deal to me. Many of his holdings are wholly owned and unavailable to investors any other way. Buy the shares, and you’ll get some free See’s Candies at the next shareholder meeting as well, another firm that Berkshire owns.

    Gold: I Told You So

    Written by MHF Trader
    September 27th, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    You may recall that I called the absolute peak in the gold market in my seminal piece on September 12th, absolutely coining it for my readers with my short plays on the way down (click here for “Macro MillionairesScore One Month Grand Slam” at). As recently as last week, I was savaged by the gold bug community forecasting that gold (GLD) could touch $1,500 before resuming its assent towards my long term target of $2,300.

    Last night, futures for the barbarous relic touched a low of $1,531, down a staggering $392 from its $1,923 peak just 20 days ago, a collapse of 20.3%. Silver (SLV) did a swan dive all the way down to $26.17, off an unbelievable 47.5% from its late April top. Something tells me that those who made “safe haven” buys over $1,900 aren’t feeling so warm and fuzzy these days.

    Don’t ascribe any magical, predictive, oracle like powers to me in making this call. Every professional out there could see history repeating itself, especially those like me who were trading during the violence of the 1979 peak. The immediate cause for the final blow off was the substantial raising of margin requirements for gold, silver, and copper on Friday. The only surprise to me is how quickly Armageddon came. They seem to be running the movie at fast forward for everything these days.

    If the market is moving up the bottom for the yellow metal so fast, I may well accelerate my buy as well. After all, in three short weeks, the potential return for a gold position has just leapt from 20% to 50%, if the $2,300 target is good.

    How will I get involved? Some near month call options on the silver ETF (SLV) could be interesting here. When gold starts to move, silver does so with a turbocharger.