- A 5 emendation: CUBA the fund is a good play on Cuba the nation
- Cigars, Cuban and otherwise, as an asset class
- If “patience” is a virtue, what does that mean for interest rates?
- Switzerland still a safe haven, despite all evidence to the contrary
- The one thing a small-business owner must do before selling a vehicle (who knew?)
- Another year-end melt-up in view… the only certainty about the Sony hack (and it’s investable)… reader musings about LED lighting, continued… and more!
“So much for those theories that investors are rational and markets are efficient,” quipped Barry Ritholtz yesterday.
The money manager, uber-blogger and crowd favorite at our conferences in Vancouver was being snarky about the sudden run-up in the Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund (CUBA) after word yesterday the United States and Cuba are starting to “normalize” relations.
Here’s a chart of CUBA’s action yesterday, and, for perspective, the day before…
“Here,” wrote Barry, “are its main holdings,” and then he presented a screenshot from his Bloomberg terminal…
Lots of Colombian and Mexican plays. Cuba? Not so much. Because, of course, that would have been illegal the last 54 years.
As you might recall, we joined in the mockery ourselves in yesterday’s episode of The 5. We likened the action in CUBA to the run-up in a bankrupt electronics retailer trading under the ticker TWTRQ on the day Twitter announced its plans to go public as TWTR.
Turns out we spoke too soon about CUBA.
“The fund aims to maximize exposure to the upcoming opening of Cuba,” interjects Ryan Cole, the newest addition to our editorial team. Mr. Cole is editor of Unconventional Wealth, a successful newsletter now publishing under our Laissez Faire banner.
Only last week, Ryan introduced his readers to the fund. “CUBA,” he explained, “holds a number of American and international companies that — while not in Cuba — are poised in the doorway.”
Fund manager Tom Herzfeld is now preparing for direct investment in the country. As well he should, Ryan says now: “Cuba’s economy is undergoing a massive shift toward capitalism.
“These are early days still. It’s about where China was in the 1970s. But already, we’re seeing results. Just before the financial crisis hit the world, Cuba’s GDP was growing by double digits every year. And during the financial crisis, as the rest of the world entered deep recession, Cuba just kept chugging along.
“This, despite no trade with the biggest economy in the region… and just about zero foreign investment.”
“I can’t lie — while I expected this, I didn’t expect it this quickly,” says Ryan. His readers are up more than 20% on CUBA.
“Know what’s even more amazing? Even after this crazy gain, CUBA is still available at a discount. The NAV — the value of the fund’s holdings — is still some 6% higher than the current stock price.”
Yes, it remains a buy: “We still have plenty of room left to run.”
Then there’s the Cuban cigar angle — which also has captured Ryan’s attention.
See, Ryan is keen on cigars — Cuban and otherwise — as an asset class. (Hey, the newsletter is called Unconventional Wealth.)
“Cigars as an investment alternative is nothing new,” he explains. “It’s said Winston Churchill had to stub out a cigar he was smoking in order to race to a meeting during World War II.
“Instead of being thrown in the trash, however, the stub was swept off the table and finally sold at auction in 2010 for 4,500 pounds ($7,250).”
Ryan also tells us another story from 2010, about an investor who plunked down a mere $118 on cigars… and cashed out with $19,321.
To be sure, Cuban cigars aren’t about to suddenly flood the United States.
Under the new rules Washington laid out yesterday, Americans still can’t get a tourist visa… so if you want to go there, it must be as part of a business venture or humanitarian group. And once you return, you can bring back only $100 worth of Cuban cigars and rum.
“That should help reduce any shock to that market,” Ryan explains. “We aren’t going to see the market flooded by tourists bringing back cigars — this won’t be an Eastern Europe/jeans sort of situation.
“More interesting is what will happen with businesses, and how imports and exports will be allowed. We might get a lot of bulk exported cigars, which will depress prices of non-Cuban cigars (but supply should still be below demand, so those Cuban cigars will do very well, and the non-Cubans won’t crater).
“And there should be a nice influx of American and Caribbean companies doing business in Cuba.”
Which brings us back to CUBA the fund. “It’s full of Caribbean and American companies poised to enter Cuba.” Intriguing…
[Ed. note: Ryan has prepared a special report laying out, among other things, how to buy cigars as an investment vehicle for gains of up to 1,875%. The report also reveals…
- One of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite investments. True, Jefferson died deeply in debt, but he might have been in even worse straits were it not for this asset class. Other less famous people have used it to make nearly 100 times their money
- The safe-haven asset that can grow 20% in 12 months… and you can get started for as little as $15
- The little-known asset with which Ted Turner started building his fortune. Even today, investors pull in as much as $4,000 a month.
“Unconventional,” for sure. But these are timeless assets, capable of thriving through booms and busts… fail-safes for the ultra-wealthy, made accessible to you via Ryan’s thorough research. We encourage you to give it a look at this link.]
Yesterday’s Fed-fueled rally in the major U.S. stock indexes is carrying over into today.
At last check, the S&P 500 has powered up to 2,038. The index is up 3.3% between yesterday and today. It’s now only 1.8% below its record close on Dec. 5.
“We’ve had two very sharp drops in the fourth quarter — October and early December,” says Greg Guenthner of our trading desk. “But once again, the market has staged a miraculous, last-second recovery… just in time for an end-of-year melt-up.”
Gold keeps trying to stay above $1,200 and can’t make it. As we write the bid is back to $1,194. Crude popped this morning, but it didn’t last, and a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is fetching $55.66.
Bonds sold off hard after the Fed announcement yesterday; a 10-year note now yields 2.21%. But the dollar rallied just as hard; the dollar index has zoomed up to 89.2.
And about that announcement…
The Federal Reserve is trying to turn the clock back 11 years.
Or so we figure after the Fed’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) issued its latest policy statement yesterday afternoon. Now that quantitative easing is done (for now, heh)… the question is when the FOMC will start raising the fed funds rate from the near-zero levels where they’ve sat since December 2008.
“[T]he Committee,” said its statement, “judges that it can be patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy.”
“Patient” was the word the Fed used under Alan Greenspan in January 2004. Greenspan had lowered the fed funds rate to a then-unthinkable 1% during and after the 2001 recession.
“[T]he Committee believes that it can be patient in removing its policy accommodation,” it said back then. Six months later, the FOMC began raising rates. And so the conventional wisdom has it that history will repeat.
Not so, tweets our Jim Rickards…
If you were with us yesterday, you know Jim thinks no rate hikes are in view next year… and that, indeed, quantitative easing will return in 2016.
Easy money to infinity… and beyond!
Can we please stop the talk of Switzerland being a “safe haven” for frightened capital?
Europeans panicked by the collapse of the Russian ruble are pouring hot money into Switzerland of late… so much so that overnight, the Swiss central bank announced commercial banks would impose a negative interest rate on checking accounts next month.
That’s right. Customers will pay the bank a rate of 0.25% to keep their money.
It’s not new, our favorite currency maven reminds us: “The Swiss did this little trick to deposit rates back in the 1970s,” writes EverBank’s Chuck Butler in today’s Daily Pfennig.
Of course, back then, the Swiss franc was a genuine “hard currency” with gold backing. It deserved safe-haven status. Now? Not so much. Not only is there no gold backing, but the Swiss central bank has an explicit policy of ensuring the euro-franc exchange rate never falls below 1.2 francs.
Which was the point of the negative interest rate pronouncement — defending that 1.2 franc line in the sand.
As Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that workin’ out for you?”
Is there anything other than circumstantial evidence to pin the hacking of Sony Pictures on North Korea?
Sometime today, federal officials will try to make their case the North Koreans hacked Sony last month as payback for a Seth Rogen comedy called The Interview, with a plotline that includes an attempted assassination of Kim Jong Un. (Yesterday, Sony canceled its Christmas Day release, fearful of a “movie Sept. 11”.)
“Assertions about who is behind any attack should be treated with a hefty dose of skepticism,” writes Kim Zetter at Wired, with a cogent analysis of the “evidence” that’s been presented to date. “Skilled hackers use proxy machines and false IP addresses to cover their tracks or plant false clues inside their malware to throw investigators off their trail…
“Nation-state attacks aren’t generally as noisy,” she goes on, “or announce themselves with an image of a blazing skeleton posted to infected computers, as occurred in the Sony hack. Nor do they use a catchy nom de hack like Guardians of Peace to identify themselves.”
And why didn’t the hackers’ initial public statement make any reference to either North Korea… or the movie?
As with most cyberattacks, there’s only one certainty: Small government-connected companies are bound to cash in from the publicity frenzy. It’s not too late for you to profit accordingly.
[Best line of the day: “I am really, really hoping that Seth Rogen is a supergenius and this is all just a huge marketing stunt,” quips our executive publisher Addison Wiggin. “I will be a fan to the end of time if that’s true.”]
Object lesson for small-business owners: When selling your truck, scrape your logo off the door first. Don’t trust anyone else to do it.
Mark Oberholtzer — a plumber from Texas City, Texas — is learning that lesson the hard way. He traded in a Ford F-250 to a dealership last year.
On Monday, the truck turned up in a video posted by the Ansar al-Deen Front, one of countless jihadi groups fighting the Assad regime in Syria. (It’s not just about ISIS.)
The anti-aircraft gun is not standard equipment…
“How it ended up in Syria, I’ll never know,” Oberholzer tells CBS News. “We had no intentions or no idea that this would even happen,” he adds in an interview with Houston’s KHOU-TV. “I just want this to go away, to tell you the truth.”
Considering the phone calls and emails he’s gotten — including death threats — that’s more than understandable. (Where do people find the time for that? Oh, yeah, the labor force participation rate is still near a 35-year low…)
“I heard on Car Talk some years ago that a township near Boston installed those LED lights on their traffic signals and had the same problems with snow,” a reader writes.
[Sometimes we’re taken aback at the topics that inspire sizeable numbers of readers to write in. But we’re adaptable…]
“They had to retrofit their traffic lights,” he continues, “with special covers which allowed the snow to slide off. Problem solved.”
The 5: Well, it’s good to know the theme is still investable.
“Is it time,” a reader writes sarcastically, “to apply for a patent for a weather/visual-condition sensor and defrost capability for LED safety systems?
“I think I’ll get right on that!
“Oh wait, I’ll have to deal with the governments.
“On second thought, I’ll just keep carefully running the red. Also, I found if you exceed the speed limit, you will have time to get through the yellow in time.”
The 5: That’s assuming the driver in front of you doesn’t slam on his brakes…
Best regards,
Dave Gonigam
The 5 Min. Forecast
P.S. Confession time: We recently spied on a few of our readers.
Click here to see the shocking footage they have on their computers.
Don’t get the wrong idea — we have everyone’s permission to show you what we’ve found.