- The quest for a Parkinson’s breakthrough…
- … and a rare opportunity for early investors to make 10 times their money
- Consume more, produce less: A statistical portrait of America 2015
- One asset class set to win no matter what the Fed does Thursday
- Forecast fulfilled: The $5 trillion energy debt tsunami looms
- Hot homebuilders… cranky old men and fantasy sports betting… conspiracy theories revisited… and more!
“Parkinson’s disease afflicts more than a million Americans,” says Stephen Petranek of our science-and-wealth team.
“It’s primarily linked to a lack of dopamine, a neurotransmitter, in a person’s brain. Dopamine is primarily associated with two things — first, as a kind of brain candy that makes you feel rewarded and plays a big part in addictions, and second, as part of the midbrain motor-control system of body movements.
“Among other things, Parkinson’s patients have uncontrollable tremors, and at the same time, their body movements slow down to the point that they become immobile.
“While there is currently no cure, symptoms can be controlled temporarily with medication — but the medication loses effectiveness over time.”
And then Stephen saw the videos of the monkey.
He was having lunch with a scientist who, for reasons you’ll soon understand, must remain nameless. The scientist pulled out his iPad Air and showed Stephen two videos.
“In the first,” he says, “a pleasant-looking and spookily human-like monkey could barely hold a banana it was eating because of tremors. In the second, the same monkey seemed perfectly normal, happily peeling his banana and jumping around the cage as if a disease called Parkinson’s had never existed.”
Nor was that monkey the only one. The scientist and his colleagues induced Parkinson’s in the monkeys… and then injected their brains with a proprietary type of stem cells.
Before you object, know that Stephen’s heard it all before. “Despite the hype and billions of dollars of research,” he acknowledges, “we’re still waiting for the promises of these miracle cells to come true.”
It’s not easy to get a stem cell to “differentiate” into the cells a researcher wants — pancreas cells, kidney cells, even skin. “The problem is purity,” Stephen explains, “because stem cells tend to retain a ‘memory’ of what they have been.
“But researchers at the company I’m talking about have found a way around that, and they have patented it. They can take what is called a human pluripotent stem cell, one that can become anything, and stimulate it so it finally morphs into specific cells.
“Even more importantly, acquiring these cells doesn’t require destroying human embryos.”
The company does not trade on the NYSE or the Nasdaq… but we know of a way you can still secure access to its shares.
You don’t have to join a private equity fund. You don’t have to go through the complex private placement process. And you don’t even need to be an accredited investor; you can get in with an income of less than $200,000 and a net worth of less than $1 million.
Similar opportunities in the recent past have generated gains of up to 1,015% in the space of 12 months.
We can’t show you the videos of the monkeys — it’s still proprietary — but we can share clips from a private audio recording featuring a biotech consultant and former executive revealing much more about the opportunity.
Please understand, because this is an off-exchange company, we must keep a strict limit on access to the full audio. We can only share clips at this time — and only with a limited number of our readers. Click here for access now.
Major U.S. stock indexes have regained all the ground they lost yesterday, and then some. The S&P 500 is up more than three-quarters of a percent as we write, at 1,969.
Hot money is flowing out of bonds, pushing up the yield on a 10-year note to a five-week high of 2.23%. Gold is likewise losing ground, less than $5 above the $1,100 level now.
For all the volatility of recent weeks… and all the uncertainty going into the Federal Reserve meeting this week… one sector is shockingly resilient.
Homebuilders “have stormed right through this whole market downturn as if it never happened,” says Greg Guenthner of our trading desk.
Also enjoying the homebuilder glow is Home Depot. HD is only a few ticks off its all-time highs, which we spotlighted a month ago.
Americans don’t need to make anything — we just need to buy stuff! Or at least that’s the takeaway from this morning’s economic numbers.
The Commerce Department says retail sales rose 0.2% in August — less than the “expert consensus” was counting on, but for the second month in a row, previous numbers have been revised up.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve says industrial production tumbled 0.4% during August. Utility production was up, but mining was down — no surprise, that’s been hurting all year with weakness in the energy patch. And manufacturing was down 0.5% — another muffed guess among dozens of economists polled by Bloomberg.
The Fed’s first reading on manufacturing during the month of September is also a bummer. The Empire State index of factory activity in New York state clocks in a minus 14.7. That’s almost as bad as the August figure, and again a total surprise to the economists who try to guess these numbers in advance.
Those numbers lend no further clarity about the Federal Reserve’s intentions when it issues its next “policy statement” in another 48 hours or so.
Our Jim Rickards still says the overall numbers are too weak to justify raising the fed funds rate… but you can’t rule out the possibility the Fed will commit a massive blunder and raise it anyway. Heh.
“The Fed could delay a rate hike this Thursday,” says Dan Amoss — who works hand in hand with Jim Rickards — “and offer markets a little stress relief (although that decision would still leave a December rate hike on the table). But if they do hike rates and intensify the deflationary pressures, this will crush risky assets like stocks and emerging-market bonds.”
Dan and Jim remain keen on Treasuries as protection under either scenario. “Our favorite way to buy and hold Treasuries is the Wasatch-Hoisington U.S. Treasury Fund (WHOSX). This bond mutual fund is performing well and has more upside potential in the two likeliest Fed scenarios:
- “If the Federal Reserve pushes its interest rate hike calendar into 2016 (as Jim expects), those who’ve sold Treasuries on fears of higher short-term rates would return to the market.
- “If the Fed goes ahead with a rate hike — despite a weakening global economy — we’d likely see a panic in the corporate bond market (and probably also in stocks), which would in turn boost safe-haven demand for Treasuries.”
Don’t look now, but here comes the $5 trillion energy-debt tsunami Jim Rickards started warning about in January.
“The oil patch is expected to finally face a financial reckoning, experts say, with carnage occurring as early as this month,” says The Wall Street Journal.
As Jim explained eight months ago, total corporate debt issuance for energy exploration between 2009-2014 works out to $5 trillion. And those loans were written on the assumption oil would stay between $80-110 instead of trading as it is this morning [checking our screens] below $45.
The Journal says smaller drillers may see their credit lines cut only weeks from now. It cites a recent analysis from Citi: “With eight bankruptcies already announced this year, weaker producers could live or die by the whims of capital providers.”
That’s a best-case scenario. The paper doesn’t entertain the worst case that Jim described in January — default rates of 10%, and that’s a conservative assumption.
Is your portfolio braced for the fallout? Check out this eye-opening interview with Jim.
“Dave, can either you or Chris explain to me how according to the fantasy-draft TV commercials, ‘you can join for FREE’ and it is ‘FREE to play’?” writes one of our regulars, following up on yesterday’s lead item.
“Just where in the hell do they get the $1-2 million you can win? Do they just print it like Uncle does?”
The 5: It might be free to play, but it’s pay to win. If it weren’t for entry fees, these companies would be even less profitable than they already are.
Which has precisely nothing to do with their growth potential… as Chris explained in a roundabout way to his Mayer’s Special Situations readers yesterday.
“A friend of mine told me about how his teenage daughter is taking baby-sitting classes.
“Baby-sitting classes?
“It sounded ridiculous to me. Gee, I thought, I never took any classes to baby-sit.
“Then recently I learned about ‘e-games.’ My 16-year-old son explained the concept to me. Basically, you watch other people play video games. There are teams and leagues and prize money. People actually bet on this too. It sounded absurd and stupid to me.
“I was talking to a friend about this recently over beers. We were making fun of the things young people do these days that we didn’t do. I wondered aloud if we were just getting old.
“You know the type. The kind of old man baffled by modern life and who thinks that everything was better in his day. I’m only 43, but even so…”
Which brings the fantasy-draft betting sites to mind. “I don’t see the appeal,” Chris went on. “It seems to me like another dumb thing to do.
“But I didn’t write that. I tried to understand it and fit it into some kind of context. When it comes to markets, I try not to say if a new thing is good or bad. I try to figure it out. I’ve watched too many great stocks sail by because I had some initial prejudice against the idea of it and didn’t spend the time to figure it out. (Amazon is one that jumps to mind.)”
“In your ‘forecast’ of last Thursday,” a reader sniffs, “it is stated (repeated) that 9/11 cost Osama Bin Laden $500,000. That’s incorrect.”
[We interrupt the reader at this point to paraphrase the middle of his email, which insinuates the attacks were an “inside job.” Unless his point is that no planes struck any building. We’re not sure.]
“By the way,” the email concludes, “if our security, intel and air defense forces really did display
such completely illogical and ridiculous ‘incompetence’ as was claimed, then how come every single person in charge of every (incompetent) agency was promoted?
“Not one person was fired, demoted or even chastised for this one-time, historic in scope, completely botched , multitrillion-dollar disaster. Not one. Make you wonder? It should.”
The 5: Oy.
First, we direct your attention to our most recent “conspiracy theory” issue from last May. We take a back seat to no one in questioning conventional wisdom.
And we’ll be the first to acknowledge unanswered questions about Sept. 11 — starting with why debris was being hauled away from the wreckage of the World Trade Center within hours of the attack. Under “normal” circumstances, wouldn’t that be tampering with a crime scene?
But no, we’re not “truthers” around here. And to get to your central point, yes, we can totally believe that incompetence is rewarded.
It’s government, fer cryin’ out loud.
Best regards,
Dave Gonigam
The 5 Min. Forecast
P.S. As long as we have “conspiracies” on the brain…
Groundbreaking new research discovered a shocking 90-day treatment for anyone with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s been called the “medical breakthrough of the century.” But for one shocking reason, most Americans will never hear about this.
Click here for the full story.
