Hard Money Newsletter Review

Market Oracle, much like Safehaven – a clean, well-organized, article farm with a well developed commodities section.

Up until the last minute, I was ready to wrap this up and conclude that Market Oracle devotes too little space to my beloved silver and that it primarily functions (from a the silver investor’s standpoint) in getting the word out generally about precious metals -but definitely weighs too heavily on the technical side to the markets.

Then there was this:

Peak Silver and Mining by a Falling EROI

And then this:

Silver set to Soar as it did in the 1970’s

So I had to change my mind a bit.

But first a word on where I was going…

Some find fundamentals to be boring. I guess it depends on your perspective, or your motivations for evaluating a market.

People I’m mainly concerned with  are those looking at silver, (or more specifically silver coins), as a long-term investment, and therefore care more about fundamentals.

In fact, the fundamentals and silver, because they have been ignored for so long, lost to the mainstream, are precisely why the people who can afford a small long-term investment will eventually flock to this area.

It’s more difficult to say the same thing about gold. In most of the content and commentary at Market Oracle was focused on gold, and not silver. (Until very recently!)

Frankly, I’m tired of technicals.

As a pure silver bug, I can do without another chart, or another wave analysis, with moving averages, pivot points, and the like.

The lure of the technicals makes sense, and good writers do it well. And make no mistake, there is no shortage of talented writers here. Contributers – link

Looking at charts and patterns provides a way to stay excited, a way to feel like you’re a part of the game.

We all need a little excitement.

For us, technical analysis  provides a way to rationalize an investment space that has traded Contrary to fundamentals for many many years.

In silver, The fundamentals are simply not in play. That’s probably the understatement of the year.

Believe me, you and everybody else will know it once silver begins trading based on fundamentals again.

To be fair Market oracle is not completely technical. And now we’re talking silver too!

An example of this can be found here, in Merv Burak’s “Gold Topping Action Continues”, from Oct 25, 2009.

Mr. Burak starts out with a fair treatise on fundamentals, and even a healthy argument as to why we need to keep them in mind before we start looking at charts and historical pivot points and price points.

Of course, the rest of this very well written, but unfortunately, technical posts, goes on to evaluate markets for not traded based on fundamentals for a very long time, including metals and agriculture.

That said, Market Oracle is a place where you can get a good cross section of who the major technical experts and gols (and silver?) market commentators are – the writing professionals in this space.

Take a look and see if you recognize any Market Oracle contributors here.

There is no shortage of content – the risk is never catching up.

So at first, I hesitated to recommend this to you, the faithful silver coin investor, in the waiting in the trenches, the the poor man, not necessarily interested in the trade or the gamble – or even the fast buck.

But then, all of a sudden, as if ordained by some magical market force, two articles appear with a focus on silver!

This one, you should go check out today.

Perhaps my fear (and maybe yours too) about fundamentals being forever obscured are about to change?

We wait and see. In the meantime, we’ll be on the lookout for more silver coin-centric content and add Market Oracle to our feed.

If you are wondering about where I’m coming from with this – or or to get the overall perspective on what it means to be a silver coin investor, check out my free guide and E-course here.

Investment Underground, published by Contrarian Profits, another offshoot (this one genetically) of the Agora ‘Goliath’ is another one, you can skip.

We silver coin investors are a funny bunch. You see, folks lucky enough to have figured out a way and a place to store what little wealth they have left over have come to this from many a direction.

Typically, we are contrarian to begin with, salt of the earth types, with not a lot of extra income lying around to gamble with.

But there is a world that opens up around you when you discover the simplicity in holding silver. (Whether that world is above or below is a matter of debate).

Many find the idea of buying physical silver for investment uncomfortable and about as appealing as a romp through the wilderness on foot that leads to a campsite in the middle of nowhere.

This is okay with us because, as a group, we like low-impact wilderness and the lessons learned in fending for oneself. This includes a level of a preparedness that comes only after considerable thought and research.

As much as we might otherwise find the plushness of the towering casinos and the allure of the fancier things in life, our resource-circumstance limits us to a different existence.

However, we are never fully disconnected from the bright lights, big cities, and indoor pluming – no more than silver can be eliminated from most of inner workings that make these modern wonders possible.

Therefore, our quest includes the need to know how our precious metal functions in the modern world, whether we are considering the markets, the industries that use silver, or the greater macro-economic or geopolitical trends that influence the value of our little stash of silver coins.

So in the quest for knowledge, there is much crossover, and we invariably come across letters and publications like “Investment Underground” – and so will you.

When you have a passion for this market, and an open curiosity, it’s easy to lose a sense of oneself and find yourself pouring over an investment offer carefully designed to lure you in.

Have fun with it. For there will perhaps come a day for this in the not-too-distant future – when you find yourself in a position to ‘leverage’ your silver coin investment. When that day comes, you’ll likely return to this email newlsetter. But for now, here’s the deal:

First off, when you sign up for investment underground,(watch the pop-up),you get a pretty steady flurry of content in your inbox.

And this part of a well-oiled machine. So, you can sit back and dabble a little from time to time – pick out a headline and then leave it be.

This is information marketing at its best. So, you’ll need to learn how to read with your silver coin identity firmly entrenched and allow yourself to dream a little, while checking any remorse for not being able to gamble – at the door.

Much of the content is specifically designed to hook you into reading and then, clicking. More often not, you get stuck reading what turns out to be an advertisement for one or another investing program.

Also, if you’ve read Addison Wiggin or will Bonner over at the Daily Reckoning or if you simply keep up with Chuck Butler’s Daily Pfennig, you can get the gist of what these e-mails cover in a broad macro-sense. You can pretty much stick with those guys. You’ll get the same message:

With the recent and ongoing financial crisis, and the amount of information sloshing around out there, crossing in and out and overlapping with similar content to Investment Underground, it makes it even more strenuous to put up with a message that shoots a little bit to the side or over the head of the typical silver investor.

And as much as I’d like to support the family affair (Will Bonner is Bill Bonner’s son), things must, at some point, come back down to earth for the silver coin investor.

Well, unfortunately for them, it doesn’t speak loud enough to the average investor.

In that most of us are just looking for a way to acquire a few more coins, and get a better understanding of how and why and what goes on in the macro world and how it affects our small world.

We need to make the connections between the broad market conditions and how they impact things that matter most to us like, silver supply tightness, industrial versus investor demand, and the ongoing and relentless price manipulation.

Of course, very few investing news sources currently give the time to those specific areas of interest, but we believe in time they will as more people will need to know.

Like many other newsletter publications, and yes, this one is free (so what could it hurt to try it out), they seem better directed toward where a lot of us are likely to be in a year. Further down along the way, maybe coming up out of the canyon, a little heavier with a few more coins on board.

But again, for the average silver investor, who has a sense of why silver is important, and where it will likely go in terms of price. You can probably skip this one.

We just finished reviewing Rick Ackerman’s Free Email Newsletter . And we think it’s worth a  sign-up.

Bear in mind that this is written for a range of readers, including swing and day-traders, market-makers, long-term investors, hedge fund managers, “upstairs” traders and floor pros, as well as laymen who simply enjoy the editor’s acerbic humor.

We like it because it is unconventional.

We look at this and apply the same sort of reasoning to why we follow writers like Chuck Butler or Bill Bonner.

You get some entertaining “voice” about the issues that trickle down to hard money.

Most of us don’t have a ton of cash sitting around waiting to be invested in currencies or in day trading. But we can certainly pay attention and learn about the big picture and do what we have to (add a few silver coins to our little stash from time to time).

And by the way, if you want an overview of Rick’s technical approach to trading, check out his video

Some of you will be intrigued by the technical analysis and one more about the approach that Rick uses for trading.

(To be fair, we only got about 10 minutes into and realized that it it was a little bit over our heads).

But the e-mail newsletter is a different story. It won’t take up much space in your inbox.

Most importantly, he’s in our camp. Through his commentary you’ll find that his opinion and perspective on the macro economy and the news that effects or influences markets is on the same page with those of us who see silver as a way to keep a little nest egg incubating.

Here is where I “discovered” him at GATA.

“Bernanke & Friends are probably throwing everything they’ve got at gold right now to suppress its price. And for all we know, Uncle Sam has loaned every ingot (supposedly) in Fort Knox to carry-traders at J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs. The ability of these well-connected bullion bankers to borrow more or less unlimited quantities of physical gold is for them even better than a license to print money, since money itself is most surely not what it used to be. The feather merchants have repaid the government’s kindness by sitting on gold futures prices. This price-fixing operation is all the more impressive because its perpetrators have managed so far to peg bullion to $1,000 even though the U.S. dollar has broken some key technical supports in recent days.”

You can practically say the same thing for silver, though we all know silver is a different animal.

You can find out pretty much everything else you need to know about Rick here.

The nice thing about signing up for feeds and newsletters is that you don’t really have to feel that pressure you get when you  discover a great site, rich in content, and the pressing need to digest it all at once.

You can simply sign up and start getting e-mails to get a ticket to justice what it’s all about.

Okay, so for the average silver investor (that’s me), What does Rick have to offer?

Well first of all, we need to understand silver in the context of not only the macro economy, but also the nano economy.

Nano economy?

Yeah, that’s the economy of the regular guy. The typical silver coin investor.

The guy who just wants to take delivery of a few silver coins to protect his nest egg or maybe just be prepared (diversified) in case of a really big crisis. No one wants to think about bartering with silver coins, but whiskey never lasts long in our house, so that won’t be an option.

So, I was pleasantly surprised after reading through a couple of months of Rick’s posts.

And for those who aspire to get the word out, wake somebody up, or just make it in an Internet publishing capacity, we could learn a lot by the way Rick delivers the goods… Short, up front, wise, and funny.

Anyway, lo and behold, here’s what he has to say on his about page:

“Indeed, we are quite possibly entering an economic period unlike any before it – one in which, paradoxically, deflation’s grip on the global economy has intensified even as credit and money growth have soared to unprecedented extremes. We are not in Kansas any more, for sure, and the old investment strategies are becoming increasingly risky as the weeks and months go by. Forget about doubling your money on the next Big Thing. It is time to safeguard the bulk of your nest egg while setting aside a modest portion of it to pursue exceptional gains. This is where Rick’s Pick’s aims to be of greatest value to you: in shaping your trading and investment decisions so that risk and reward are in optimal balance. Discover how you can confidently chart your own path to a financially secure future.”

As far as the trading stuff and stock picks, I look forward the day, (perhaps not far off), of having the ability to make more of these kind of trading and investment decisions.

I think most silver (coin) bugs understand that this day may come soon. Never hurts to be prepared.

Because after silver really takes off, I might have enough money left to play in the world of chart investing, Elliott wave analysis, or technical fund buying, etc. What fun!

Rick would likely point out that one group of readers who subscribe and join his camp include long-term investors.

Well, what better place to be for a silver coin investor?

Check out Rick here.

Updated 9-21-09

Before I began investing in silver coins, I made sure that I had a modest handle on the market lingo. And there is a lot of lingo.

Sometimes the best way to approach any new thing is to jump in and take it about as far as you can go.

Some information is friendlier than others when it comes to the ‘lingo’.

When you jump right in, you can find out fast what you don’t know. Then you can study it, live with it a little, and then come back around to it look at from a different (usually larger) perspective.

That’s the beauty of most these free newsletters. Especially when you have to think a little.

Which is part of why I review them for you!

Look, a lot of the people who write about the hard money world live and breath these markets everyday – and they write as a natural extension of their day to day thought process.

If they can also manage to set up a system whereby they deliver this to you efficiently, then everyone benefits. Even the newly initiated.

Jim Sinclair and the JSMineset is a case in point.

Nothing flashy here, he covers gold broadly. This means that you’ll find a lot of technical stuff.

But it is just the right amount of technical to keep the learning curve high.

He’s been around this block and is one of these players who can’t help but produce useful (if more advanced) content and perspective about this sector. So he doesn’t really need a lot of words.

There are other contributors and an archive section that works.

Dan Norcini is one of these contributors. You can also find him over at the Daily Reckoning.

Of course, like us, Mr. Sinclair is a bull. And he while he doesn’t cover Silver quite as directly a silver bug would like – we are appreciative and ever-ready to interpret our world through the plight of the yellow metal.

This is one of those places to jump in and get some perspective. Sign-up for his updates. They are well-worth the follow.

Just remember, if you are like me (and Mr. Sinclair), you realize that is more important to consider physical gold and/or silver free of outside liability before anything else. Buy it. Hold it. And, keep it out of the hands of others.

We reviewed a series of newsletters from HardAssetInvestor.com and found them to be of value for a quick review of the main site postings, but not for much more. This is more for the mainstream investor and not the contrarion or gold and silver bug.

And if you like being subjected to official-looking, though hard-to-follow arguments against there being evidence for gold and silver price manipulation, this is one place.

To be fair, Hard Assets is a business, and there is nothing quite like controversy to build some traffic. And the comments came a plenty following Brad Zigler’s recent post on Gold Manipulation.

In getting back to the purpose of this review, we looked at the emails newsletter. It’s free and regular, linking you to plenty of article titles and brief descriptions of topics about commodity equities, commodity futures, and gold.

Directed toward individual. as well as institutional investors,they cover the commodity arena pretty thoroughly, yet without adding much needed insight to issues as they pertain to physical possession of silver and/or gold.

It is perhaps ironic that gold and silver bugs truly need a broader, macro perspective when ‘playing’ this market. Most likely, your strategy is to buy and hold on tight for the ride and your interest lies in the broad strokes that effect these markets and less for the short-term.

For us, the emails are good enough that we get the gist of the various articles, which are offered as much easier way to keep up with the frequent postings.

We’ll keep looking at them and maybe if you are looking for the language of commodities trading or a diversion into another market, than Hard Asset Investor Emails will be for you.