Before we come to the main thrust of today’s piece, there is something I need to flag. We are just coming into North American tax loss selling season, and a number of you have asked if I will be putting together a portfolio of tax loss trades this year.
The answer is, “maybe”.
I’m not sure how well it will work this year for reasons you are about to find out, but it’s something I am still considering, and I will I try to have a list of options for next week’s missive. By my reckoning the dates when you’ll find the biggest bargains this year will be Friday December 19, Monday December 22 and Tuesday December 23, though the window stretches from next week all the way to New Year’s Eve.
What am I talking about?
At the end of the year in the US and Canada, investors (both retail and institutions) sell their worst performing stocks in order to realise losses to offset against gains elsewhere in order to reduce their tax bill.
This selling tends to climax in the last two or three days of trading before Christmas and it means badly performing stocks, particularly illiquid ones, get way oversold only to experience something of a rally in the first few weeks of the following year as the selling dissipates.
So the trade is simple: buy as the selling climaxes and then flip sometime in February (my Canadian broker says March and last year this proved very true).
Nothing is guaranteed in this cruel world (except the further debasement of your national currency), but it is a trade with a remarkably successful hit rate, and a clear timescale. It also becomes apparent pretty quickly if it isn’t working, enabling you to exit any losers early.
If you live in a Third World Country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound is going to be further devalued. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
By all means go back and audit me, but last year I believe 8 of the 9 ideas worked.
Some picks work better than others. Some years work better than others, but gains of 20-50%, even doubles sometimes, are not uncommon. The trade works particularly well in smallcap Canadian resource stocks, as, when they are bad, they are really bad, and can get hugely oversold. However, this year Canadian resource stocks, particularly gold and silver miners, have had a bonanza year, so there won’t be much tax selling there. In fact, markets more generally have been strong, so there is not the normal flood of dogs to be sold.
However, I have some ideas. Crypto Treasury Companies, for example, could be big winners because of the huge losses they have generated. So keep an eye out and I will try and have something for you this time next week. Be ready to move quickly, as well, so have some cash to play with.
Right. Changing the subject.
Why both legal and illegal immigration is set to increase
I can’t go online now without seeing something about uncontrolled immigration. Yesterday saw the sentencing of two Afghan 17 year olds for raping a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa. (Spoiler: they weren’t 17. They’ve lied about their age, on that I’ll bet the house. Not that anyone in authority will have noticed). And it’s not just online, it’s in the world around me. I live in south London, so I see it all the time. I travel a lot around the country doing gigs and the changing demographics of the UK are everywhere, even in the remotest parts of the country. I think a little bit of immigration is a good thing, but this is happening too fast and on too big a scale.
When a business messes up badly, it goes bust and another, better run business comes along and does the job better. When a state body messes up badly, a load more money gets spent on an inquiry - in the case of the rape gangs £65 million - usually headed by a Blob insider (in this case Starmer appointed peer Baroness Anne Longfield). The mess gets whitewashed as much by time as anything, and the state body continues as before, dysfunctional as ever, if not more so.
Unlike those operating in a free market, the state as it currently functions, is incapable of reacting to the new realities of the world around us. There are more people than ever before in the world, and more of them than ever are on the move. Thanks to better planes, trains, boats and cars, they are able to move further and faster than ever before. Thanks to smart phones, which over 90% of the world’s adult population now has, better information about how and where to go gets spread. Smart phones also create FOMO - you gaze at the life you could have - so there is more desire to move than ever before. And the fact that 3 billion people earn less than $40/day means there is a greater urge to move than ever. This is the reality of the world in which we live. It is patently obvious mass migration of people is going to increase.
And yet the British government, nor most Western governments, have no plan in place to deal with it all. They can’t even deal with current levels of migration, let alone illegal migration or future migration. There has been no debate or agreement on what the right levels of migration should actually be. With no clarity, policy is, inevitably, both incoherent and inadequate. Promises by every government since Cameron’s coalition have been broken. The courts and legal system were designed for a different people in a different age and are no longer fit for purpose. This all assumes, of course, government could actually lower migration levels if it wanted, which I don’t believe it actually can because of sheer weight of numbers. Thanks to the ECHR and a general unwillingness within the Blob to address this, there is not even the ability to properly tackle this issue anyway. State institutions and infrastructure - from roads to health to education to welfare - cannot cope with the increased numbers and are crumbling. Wealth creators are leaving to be replaced by net takers, resulting in an increased tax burden and eventual likely bankruptcy of the country. Trust has gone and we are accelerating along the road to ruin.
Such repeated failure by a business over many years would result in the extinction of that business. But the state operates by a different set of rules, and the only thing that can end it is the destruction of the currency itself. Hence why I say own gold.
So that’s where we are.
Exploiting the end of Britain: blood money and crony capitalism
You can rant and rail and make a noise. But I don’t see what you or anyone can actually do about it. A Reform majority at the next election is what many are pinning their hopes on, but a hung parliament looks more likely. Would even a runaway win for Reform at the next election change much? I doubt it, myself. There’s too much opposition within the system. Liz Truss only tried to slash government spending by 2.5% and look what happened there.
As investors our job is not to pass moral judgement on the rights and wrongs of all this. Many think it’s a good thing the West gets destroyed! Our job is to navigate the waters as best we can.
As you know I urge readers to own non- government currencies, money they can’t debase - gold and bitcoin.
But having just said our job is not to pass moral judgement, I do pass moral judgement when I invest. I shouldn’t, but I do. I don’t buy government bonds, especially gilts, for example, because in doing so you enable government, when government is the problem. Starve the monster is my take.
I’m also not participating in the trade I am about to outline here, because it would make me feel dirty. But the more ruthless of you will be fine with it, and you’ll get no flack from me. I hate getting ripped off at airports and train stations, so I have a bit of WH Smith in my portfolio as an offset. This is a little bit like that.
There are companies making an absolute fortune from illegal migration. And while this situation continues, they are going to continue making money. Why shouldn’t you as well?
Their customer, the government, is a bureaucrat spending somebody else’s money so will pay pretty much whatever. Demand for their services is only going to increase as migration increases. There is no competitive marketplace - you’re not having to compete with other hotels, for example. These companies are all paid by the government - you in other words - to provide facilities for asylum seekers. The contracts are juicy, and those bureaucrat fingers are fat with taxpayer cash.
Here’s how to profit from illegal migration in the UK.
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