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Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to be joined by a man who needs little introduction, Marc Faber, editor of The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report. Dr. Faber has been a long-time guest on financial shows throughout the world, and is a well-known Austrian economist and investment advisor, and it’s a tremendous honor to have him on with us today.
Dr. Faber, thanks so much for joining us again, and how are you?
Marc Faber: Well, it’s my pleasure to be on your show. Thank you.
Mike Gleason: Let’s start out here with the equities Marc. Now the U.S. stock markets peaked in late January and made their lows for the year in early February. Stocks have been trading in a range since, but are currently pushing back towards those lows as volatility has certainly picked up. If you had to guess about which way the markets are likely to break from here, what would it be, and do you think we’ve seen the top for 2018 or can speculators keep pushing the markets higher for a bit longer?
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Marc Faber: That’s a good question and I think everybody’s interested in the answers and everybody has a different view, but I have maintained that the January 26th high for the S&P up 2,872 was like a mirror image of the low on March 6th, 2009 when the S&P was at 666. At that time, everybody was bearish and leading strategy and I don’t want to name who, but they were predicting for the S&P to fall to 400. And what happened is that, because sentiment was so negative, and the market was so oversold, the market turned around and actually on very poor earnings, started to go up. And now, we have, in January, a high, when everybody felt that the market would go higher and what then happened is that on good earnings, stocks didn’t move up, but started to go down.
So, I think we are in a situation where it is likely, it’s not yet a hundred percent sure, in order to get a clearer picture, if a major bear market has started, we would have to make a low below the February low, but that hasn’t happened yet. But looking at the market and the market action and the momentum and the number of stock that are actually making new lows, I’d say there is a fair probability that the market will disappoint point very badly.
Mike Gleason: Dr. Faber, it seems to us that the fate of precious metals markets is tied pretty closely to stock prices, at least in the near term. We lack either fear or greed to drive any trend change. Here in the U.S. there’s very little demand for safe-haven assets. If you look at sentiment in the metals markets you’ll find that the greed factor is also missing. Now that could all change if gold and silver can catch investors’ attention by significantly outperforming stocks for a while longer or if we get the long overdue correction stocks.
Now Marc, you wrote recently about two items you feel would signal a major top in the equity markets. The first had to do with the public going all-in, coupled with an excessive amount of speculation. The second would be the revelation of a major fraud. Those items will be familiar to anyone who had taken a good look at the 2008 financial crisis. Are you expecting history to repeat itself here?
Marc Faber: Well, I think there is a lot of disinformation, and usually when stocks go down, some fraud comes to the surface. And I expect it to happen, and I mean in a major way. Whether the fraud is related to some corporation, which I think is quite likely, or whether it’s related to the fraud that is going on in the pension fund system, where pension funds are grossly underfunded, and, in the future, will either have to increase contributions or reduce distributions. I think these are items that could happen. Secondly, the public may start to lose faith in the system because of the political situation. I think the political situation in the U.S. is very bad, and If you read about what has been happening at the FBI, the CIA in Washington, you have to scratch your head whether that is all possible in a system that is supposedly functioning.
It’s like Watergate, but actually magnified. So, I think there is a possibility that investing public loses interest in financial assets. You talked about precious metals. I think there has been, just recently, a huge short position in the dollar. In other words, speculators, 15 months ago, they were heavily long in the dollar, and now they are very heavily short dollar. I think the dollar may rebound and as a result, precious metals may not move up right away. I think, eventually, they’ll move up, but for the next, say, one or two months, I don’t see how precious metals would rally significantly.
Mike Gleason: Getting back to politics here for just a moment, it does appear that we may be on the verge of a global trade war. What are your thoughts on the tariffs being imposed by the Trump administration on China, and how do you envision that playing out?
Marc Faber: My view is that, actually, the Trump administration, for which, I would have voted for Mr. Trump, but he proves every day that he’s a completely clueless individual. He says one thing and then does something totally different. He changes his view all the time. And I think, quite frankly, there is a trade war which maybe won’t happen, but if there is one, the U.S. will be the big loser, because consumer prices in the U.S. will go up and that is not desirable at the present time, as the Fed is already tightening and interest rates have been rising, so what it will mean is, if there is a trade war, initially the dollar will actually rally. But this is precisely what the U.S. shouldn’t have, a very strong dollar.
Mike Gleason: Turkey is the latest nation to announce that they will repatriate their gold, joining a number of other countries who have declared they will do the same. What does this say about the confidence in the system, and then what do you think these countries are positioning themselves for? Basically, why are they doing this?
Marc Faber: Well, I think the question should be: why did they actually hold gold in the U.S.? I personally think that, to hold your assets that are like a safe-haven, in another country is a risk by itself… so I understand all these countries. And secondly, I think for the first time in Bretton Woods, we have less confidence or less faith in the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. I think the U.S. policymakers, especially the Neo-cons, had the talent to antagonize Mr. Putin and also Mr. Xi in China.
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By doing that, they have actually managed to get them closer into an economic and political alliance. And the goal of these two countries, Russian and China, is probably to gradually move away from a dollar system. I’ll tell you, I personally, I’m not a U.S. citizen, I’m just an international observer of economic, financial, and political trends. I cannot imagine a foreign policy that would be worse for the U.S. itself than what the Neo-cons have engineered. I just can’t imagine.
Mike Gleason: Yeah, that’s a very fair point, there. Speaking of oil and the petrol dollar, oil prices have been moving up steadily for a while now. Do you envision a broader commodity rally taking place here, and then maybe could that benefit precious metals in the long run?
Marc Faber: Well, a lot of industrial commodities have been rallying because of commodities-related circumstances, like aluminum rallies because of the trade embargo against Russia, and so forth. But if I look at industrial commodities, I rather have the feeling that they will come down. Why? I think the increase in interest rates in the U.S. on the 10-year treasury note from 1.38 percent in the summer of 2016 to the current level of over three percent, in other words, we more than doubled in the yield in the bond market. And for the two-year treasury, we have been going up between 10 and 20 times depending how you measure it.
I think these interest rate increases will slow down the U.S. economy, and probably bring about a recession.
