E How The Rest Of 2016 Will Play Out

Traders and investors can be excused for being confused, befuddled, and clueless about the future direction of all asset classes after the trading violence of the first six weeks of 2016.

$500 points down!

$400 points up!

Ten year Treasury bond yields at 1.55%!

Negative interest rates in Japan!

Oil hits $26!

HELP!

Professional Investment Advisors have seen their phones ring off their hooks, with no clear answers to give nervous clients.

As for me, the future direction of every asset class for the balance of 2016 is as clear as the view from my mountaintop aerie today. I can even see both the distant Farallon Islands and the snow covered High Sierras without a telescope from where I sit.

I’ve seen all this before.

Every decade or so, we get a year like this one.

In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis promised to bring us nuclear Armageddon.

I remember 1968 like it was yesterday. The Vietnam War was in full swing, and we were losing 2,000 men a month. My turn was coming up.

Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, and Robert Kennedy was shot the night he won the California Democratic presidential primary.

1974 gave us Watergate, the US government cut its last ties with the gold standard, and the barbarous relic soared.

That led to free floating exchange rates, the money-making opportunity of the century. We all became experts in anything foreign very quickly.

Then came 1979.

We were subjected to the prolonged torture of the Iran Hostage Crisis, when more than 60 staff from our Tehran embassy were held for 444 days. The US economy was in a deep, long-term funk. The world thought we had become weak.  Post Vietnam American military strength reached a nadir.

No one in the industry will forget the 1987 crash. Note: after a one-day 20% fall, stocks resumed a bull market that lasted 13 more years. Take that as a hint for the future.

I’ll never forget 1998, when Russia defaulted on its debt, and Long Term Capital Management went bust. The Volatility Index (VIX) rocketed to $42, and stayed there forever. The first funds shorting technology stocks started going under.