I just got off the phone with my wife. She is driving up 81 from Charlotte, North Carolina to Central Maryland. It’s a distance of 440 miles. She’s been traveling since yesterday afternoon and is grateful to have a rental car.
She told a long tail of crowded airports, angry travelers, old people sleeping in corners, credit cards that didn’t work, rude customer service, and crazy fights for rental cars. Tales like these always remind me of the old trope that civilization is about nine meals away from chaos.
You see, my better half had the misfortune of flying back from a Midwest business trip last night. She got delayed first by storms and then by the chaos caused by the Crowdstike/Microsoft debacle.
Global Brick
If you haven’t heard, Crowdstrike (CRWD), the security software firm, said they bricked half the world’s computer systems by pushing through an update. This patch somehow failed and gave Microsoft’s blue screen of death to all sorts of companies including airlines, banks, 911 systems, Skynews, and more.
This has created a surge in conspiracy theories. One guy calling himself Parman Bitcoin Mentor on X wrote:
“There were supposed to have been riots.
This Microsoft issue was PLANNED for this time, and I think was going to be bigger and more chaotic. Some tyrannical shit was about to go down, I can feel it.”
I feel you, Parman.
One must wonder given that Crowdstrike’s whole business model is security if they would ever admit that they got hacked. It is better for their reputation to make up some failed update story than admit the Iranians froze half the planet.
There is enough sketchy stuff going on in the past few weeks that I wouldn’t be shocked that it was some CIA/FBI/Russian/North Korean/George Sorus/Globalist/Chupacabra/Reichstag fire/Gulf of Tonkin/Wag the Dog /False Flag/Illuminati/Free Masons coup attempt.
In any event, it has been a hell of a news cycle.
And yet, as I write this the stock market is holding up fine. Microsoft (MSFT) is down less than half a percent and Crowdstrike (CRWD) is down 10% after being down 20% earlier in the day.
All the major indexes are down less than 1% but gold and silver are down more than 2%.
That said, I sold the rest of my S&P500 index funds today after the uptrend was broken. Any bad news over the weekend and we could lose 200 points on Monday easy.
I also started to add to my gold mining stocks.
If you want to own gold as a hedge the simplest way is to buy GDX the ETF. One click, easy peasy.
If you believe in buying the biggest and best, the blue-chip list is as follows in order:
VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX)
Franco-Nevada Corporation (FNV)
Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (WPM)
Royal Gold, Inc. (RGLD)
Barrick Gold Corporation (GOLD)
There will be enough boom in precious metals that you don’t have to go out to the high-risk stuff to make money. Heck if you are sitting in a money market account getting 4.5% you will be very happy if a 2008-type scenario plays out.
Most people have made a lot of money in index funds over the past two years. The S&P 500 has been up over 20% for the past two years. It won’t continue. I know everyone says that is what you should do, but contrarily after a long, long run, it is why you shouldn’t.
Go to cash. Buy gold. Buy silver.
All the best,
Christian DeHaemer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
https://www.outsiderclub.com/a-sell-off-is-inevitable/
https://www.outsiderclub.com/news-from-july-2007/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/19-date-gold-outperform-p-130900325.html
Full disclosure: I own Barrick Gold.
