Photo Credit: Jason Woodhead || Forget the United States Oil Fund — if you want to own oil, buy a tank and store the oil on your own property. This should be a short post. Buffett likes to own T-bills when he doesn’t have anything that he wants to buy. Why? He is storing value until the time comes when he can buy something that he thinks offers a superb return over the long haul. And now for something that seems completely different: commodity investing, when it was introduced in the nineties, offered “yield” from rolling the futures contracts from month-to-month. That ended when the trade got too crowded, and the “yield” went negative. The ETFs that pursued these strategies were … [Read More...]

Photo Credit: Mike Licht || As a culture, we are very much “live for the moment.” But what happens when buyers of Treasuries decide that it’s not worth it anymore?I am not a fan of the Democrats or of Big Government Republicans like Bush Jr. and Trump. In general, I think we need to shrink our government, decentralize, and de-lever our economy such that we make debt a smaller component of how we finance our lives. The Democrats talk about inequality, but they don’t really mean it. Increasing marginal tax rates is good show, but the real game is how income is calculated, and they won’t touch that, because their richest donors find ways to hide their income — the … [Read More...]

Photo Credit: Steve Rotman || As Simon and Garfunkel sang, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls…”Debt-based economies are unstable. Economies with a lot of short-term debt are more unstable. The Fed is like Johnny One-Note, or Fat Freddie with a hammer. They only know one tool, and it will solve all problems.Are there problems from too much debt? More debt will solve the problem. Shift debts from the private to the public sector. Don’t let the private market solve this on its own.Though the bed debt is not in the same place as the last crisis, we are once again trying to play favorites through the Federal Reserve and rescue entities that took … [Read More...]

Photo Credit: Sacha Chua || Planning is a good thing.In any investment decisions, one must look at the long term. Don’t pay any attention to news that does not permanently change business conditions.The thing that drew my attention here is the rather weak coronavirus. Stalin supposedly said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” My sympathies to the families of those who have died from the coronavirus. But to society as a whole, the coronavirus has done less damage than influenza does every year.As such, I don’t pay attention to the coronavirus. Stocks are long-term assets, and if the coronavirus will have no impact on the economy past 2025, I don’t see why I … [Read More...]

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk=================For about two months, I wondered when I would write this.  Now I know… I’m writing it now.  To all my readers, I am letting you know that Aleph Blog is not ending, but it is changing.  I accepted a writing assignment with The Balance.  I am going to write 4-5 articles for them per month, and correct some old articles as well.  I will publish links to them here.  Like Aleph Blog, The Balance is free, so you don’t have to do anything more than click on the article link here to read it.Why did I do this?  I felt I was getting stale in my writing.  I was a little bored; that’s why I wasn’t writing so much.  … [Read More...]