We’re always amazed that people continue to think that gold coins are a good way to gain exposure to the gold market, even after scams like Goldline have been exposed. Now, it seems the allure of coins may finally be fading.
Category: Markets
14
Jan
2013
10
Jan
2013
The Yen Bounce Fails to Stick
We were a little nervous this week when one of the bigger trends of the moment – the falling Yen – looked like it was getting ready for a bounce. Such bounces had repeatedly erased open trading profits for trend followers throughout 2012, but the last couple days has given us reason to let out a cautious sigh of relief.
08
Jan
2013
Final Score: Asset Class Performance for 2012
2012 is officially in the books, and in terms of asset class performance, the rankings remain similar to what we’ve seen over the past several months. While we will get into the specifics about what generated the managed futures performance numbers in our newsletter this week, and will cover what to expect in 2013 next week, here’s how things ended up.
03
Jan
2013
A Lucky 2013 for Bond Bears?
Watching for signs that the 30+ year bond bull is coming to an end is something of a pastime here at Attain, and it looks like the anticipation has been spreading. Last month it was hedge fund bigwig Ray Dalio, and now the online commentators are jumping on board, too.
02
Jan
2013
Commodity ETFs Suck – 2012 Edition
Another year has come and gone, which means another year’s worth of data comparing three long-only commodity ETFs (USO, UNG, and CORN) to a strategy of just buying the December futures contract and rolling it annually. No surprise to us – the ETF’s woefully underperformed yet again. But how can $2.6 billion be so out of touch on this?
31
Dec
2012
Grains, Nikkei, Lumber top 2013 markets
While people were enamored with Jeff Gundlach’s great call on short Apple/long natural gas, the real trade of the year appears to have been long lumber/short coffee. Here’s our wrap-up of the commodity markets for 2012.
28
Dec
2012
Careening Over the Dairy Cliff
In case all that fear mongering and minute-by-by minute obsessing over the fiscal cliff hasn’t sated your desire for hyperbole and manufactured crisis, you’ll be happy to know that the “cliff” meme is spilling over into other areas, too. The Congressional gridlock we all know and love has prevented our legislators from addressing the expiring farm bill, which could be seriously bad news for any dairy fans out there.
20
Dec
2012
Gold and Stocks Decoupling?
Gold futures have been getting hammered in the last few days (silver too) while stocks have been rebounding nicely back nearly to the 2012 highs we saw in September-October. But would a decoupling between gold and stocks really be all that unusual?
12
Dec
2012
The Best Way to Lose Money on Gold
Diversification is great, and despite coming down off its recent highs, gold has certainly treated investors well over the last few years. But there’s one method of gaining gold exposure that’s almost always a bad idea, and sadly, many investors don’t seem to know it.
06
Dec
2012
Asset Class Scoreboard November Update
The penultimate edition of our 2012 Asset Class Scoreboard is out, and while the order of the scoreboard hasn’t changed since last month, neither the ranking nor the numbers are what we would like to see. There may be one month left before we have the final tally on 2012, but we’re ready to put this year’s performance in the past and (hopefully) have a better asset class scoreboard to report next year.
