Welcome to the July edition of Views from the Crows Nest.

Calgary summers are short, and so this edition will be, too.

Too much of almost anything is bad for us, including essential elements of a healthy lifestyle. Food, drink, sunshine, and exercise in moderation are excellent, but in excess they can be destructive.

The same holds true of information consumption. In respect of our investment portfolio, the mainstream financial industry would have us believe that more information is always better. The typical hooks that broader media use include: conflict (very polarized market opinions), celebrity (what the richest and famous Wall Street types are saying), fear of missing out on gains (greed), and fear of losing capital (this is the big hot-button).

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Welcome to the June edition of Views from the Crows Nest.

There are certain times – like now – when investment markets appear to be in a state of “suspended animation.” And it’s extreme times like these when the disconnection of markets from common sense, logic and rational valuation puts our Patience and Discipline to the test in an almost overwhelming way. Rest assured, a major tipping point is coming soon, perhaps even before the next edition of this newsletter.

Since the equity markets hit their crisis bottom in early March 2009, many investors have been waiting for the second half of the global debt hurricane to hit. This bias, based on then-recent experience, makes it difficult for many to ride an uptrend with patience…after having been burned significantly by market declines that mainstream “experts” said were simply not possible. It’s also incredibly difficult to forget the emotional and financial pain caused by the 2008-9 financial crises.

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Welcome to the May 2013 Views from the Crowsnest.

The great gold trader Jessie Livermore is credited with saying “The biggest profits are in your patience.” This wisdom rings true whether you are still invested in US equities which continue to rise seemingly incessantly, or you are waiting to play the downside in equity markets.

And if you’ve already exited most or all of the equity positions in your portfolio, you may find yourself feeling rather impatient while waiting for the current market euphoria to end. Patience, indeed.

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The interval since my last Views from the Crows Nest

“Mass Media Mimics Mass Mania”

Since our January edition of Views from the Crows Nest, equity markets continued their slow grind higher for almost two weeks. In the last two weeks we’ve finally begun to see signs of a short-term market top. One of the most reliable signs of an inflection point was delivered yet again by the mainstream media.

On Saturday February 2nd, uber-accurate gold market timer Mark Leibovit spoke at the World Outlook Financial Conference and remarked about a powerful headline in that day’s business section of the Globe & Mail. In reference to the equity market rally, they declared “The End of Fear.” We know from experience that “The Herd is always wrong at the extremes, but creates the trend in between.”

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Welcome to the January 2013 issue of Views from the Crows Nest.

Well, the folks in Washington D.C. certainly did another number on investment markets with a slightly- later-than-eleventh-hour “fiscal cliff fluff deal” that does nothing to address a life-threatening spending addiction by the US federal government. And now we get to listen to endless yammering about raising the debt ceiling.

Over the next six weeks this debate will escalate, with the predictable grandstanding, digging in of heels, standing on principle, then caving in at the last minute to prevent both a shutdown of the US Federal Government and any kind of default on outstanding US debt obligations. It will likely become the primary hot button topic for everyone, cause a significant rise in market anxiety and serve as a wonderful distraction from everything else that is happening. In a democracy, a nation gets the government it deserves.

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Welcome to the 2013 Annual Forecast Issue of Views from the Crowsnest. Over the last six weeks we’ve been hunkered down in quiet contemplation of what 2013 may bring. The world continues to edge closer to the second major downturn in what I believe is The Second Great Depression.

Final editing of this edition is happening on December 30th, before the “fiscal cliff” negotiations have been resolved…so we could start 2013 with a bang, though we’re not certain where the gun is pointed! It’s better to be out of the markets and wishing you were in, than to be in and wishing you were out of the markets…so we’ve been rather conservatively positioned for over a week now.

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Welcome to the December 2011 edition of Views from the Crows Nest, which doubles as our 2012 Annual Forecast issue. Your author took an unplanned break from publishing for November. The bottom line is that we were so busy with client meetings across western Canada and ongoing market research that there simply wasn’t time available.

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