Nick Hodge - Angel PublishingLatest Articles by Nick Hodge of Angel Publishing2014-10-13T18:31:52ZXL Gold CycleDespite what you may have read on the Internet or seen on television, there are several reasons to be super bullish on gold...<p>Despite what you may have read on the Internet or seen on television, there are several reasons to be super bullish on gold...</p>
<p>As a simple indicator, you can look at the Dow/Gold ratio. This is a way to value gold based on real terms... not hypothetical ones.</p>
<p>The historical average of the Dow/Gold ratio is 4:1. That means on average throughout history, it’s taken four times gold's price to equal the point value of the Dow.</p>
<p>To get back to the historical average with the Dow near 17,000, gold would have to be trading around $4,250 per ounce.</p>
<p>However, during XL Gold Cycles, the Dow/Gold ratio tends to gravitate towards a 1:1 ratio.</p>
<p>This happened in the 1930s and the 1970s — the last two XL Gold Cycles.</p>
<p>The price of an ounce of gold (rather than four ounces) would equal the point value of the Dow.</p>
<p>In fact, we saw this happen the last time the XL Gold Cycle turned over.</p>
<p>On January 21, 1980, gold hit $850/oz., while the Dow was valued at 872.78 — nearly one to one.</p>
<p>If that were to happen today, that’d put gold all the way up to $17,000 per ounce.</p>
<p>It's critical you know more about XL Gold Cycles today. Our sister publication, <em>Outsider Club</em>, has published a full report on it to get you ahead of the curve. You can find a link to that report on this page: <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/xl-gold-cycle-makes-millionaires-like-clockwork/1229" target="_blank">XL Gold Cycle Makes Millionaires Like Clockwork.</a></p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2014-10-13T18:31:52Z2014-10-13T18:31:52Z4624Nick HodgeXL Gold Cycle: A Pattern of FortuneEvery 40 years, like clockwork, a gold bull market takes hold. It's called the XL Gold Cycle, and every time it's has over, millions - even billions - of dollars have been made.<p>Every 40 years, like clockwork, a gold bull market takes hold.</p>
<p>It's called the XL Gold Cycle, and every time it's has over, millions — even billions — of dollars have been made.</p>
<p>And this time around, it’s going to be bigger than ever.</p>
<p>Don’t believe me? Think the idea of gold going to $16,000/oz. is absurd?</p>
<p>Well, you’re probably not alone. But for those of us who already know how the XL Gold Cycle works, it’s not crazy at all.</p>
<p>Today, it's your turn to see how it works.</p>
<p>You see, roughly every 40 years, this cycle rears its head, and fortunes are made.</p>
<p>You can trace it back 200 years... and EVERY time, folks who understood what was happening made incredible piles of cash.</p>
<p>At this point, the newest XL Cycle turnover has just begun, and those who play this right stand to make an absolute fortune.</p>
<p>How much, exactly?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/xl-gold-cycle-makes-millionaires-like-clockwork/1229">Click here to continue reading</a> about the XL Gold Cycle on our sister site, <em>Outsider Club.</em></p>2014-10-08T17:51:28Z2014-10-08T17:51:28Z5388Nick HodgeIRM(72) Retirement Plan InfoAre you looking for information on IRM(72) retirment plans?<p>Are you looking for information on IRM(72) retirment plans?</p>
<p>Well, look no further.</p>
<p>There is now an entire website devoted to helping you learn more about IRM(72) plans: what the are, which companies offer them, and how you can start using them today to safely grow your wealth over the long term.</p>
<p>The website is <a href="http://www.IRM72.com/">www.IRM72.com</a>.</p>
<p>You can also join our sister publication, <em>Outsider Club</em>, to get a full IRM(72) report for free. <a href="http://subscribe.outsiderclub.com/57625">Do that by clicking here.</a></p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>
<p><br /><br /></p>2014-06-24T17:06:57Z2014-06-24T17:06:57Z4478Nick HodgeWhat Is An IRM(72) Retirement Plan?A lot of people have been wondering about IRM(72) retirement plans. Well, wonder no more. We've put up a dedicated site for IRM(72) plans.<p>A lot of people have been wondering about IRM(72) retirement plans.</p>
<p>Well, wonder no more. We've put up <a href="http://www.irm72.com/">a dedicated site for IRM(72) plans.</a></p>
<p>It explains what they are, how they help multiply your wealth, and how to start your own IRM(72) plan today.</p>
<p>You can also sign up to our sister publication, <em>Outsider Club</em>, to get a free report on IRM(72) plans. <a href="http://subscribe.outsiderclub.com/57625">Click here to do that.</a> </p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>
<p></p>2014-06-24T17:03:04Z2014-06-24T17:03:04Z5221Nick HodgeShale Natural Gas Better than OilNatural gas has always been oil's bastard brother. It's flared off as a waste byproduct, for crying outloud. But no more... Natural gas can and should be a critical fuel for the U.S. and the world.<p>Six days after the presidential election, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projected the United States would become “all but self-sufficient” in meeting its energy needs within two decades.</p>
<p>The reason for this should come as no surprise to you: <span style="text-decoration: underline;">fracking.</span></p>
<p>The IEA also said the fracking boom would:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Lead to the U.S. overtaking Russia as the largest gas producer by 2015</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Cause U.S. oil imports to fall from ten million barrels per day to four mb/d in ten years</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Allow the U.S. to surpass Saudi Oil production by 2020</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Your editor is a bit skeptical.</p>
<p>Yes, there is a huge shale resource. Yes, new drilling technologies are allowing us to reap more of it than we have before. Yes, there is serious money to be made if you play it right.</p>
<p>But there are a few problems...</p>
<p>The biggest one is that shale plays depend on constant drilling, and the most current production is from the most recently drilled wells.</p>
<p>Think about it like this: In a giant oil field filled with light, sweet crude, you drill a well and then you can extract from it for a long time. You drill a hole, and then suck it out with a straw.</p>
<p>Fracked wells are more complicated. They require constant drilling and injection of pressurized water to release the shale oil from tight formations deep below the earth. This is much more expensive.</p>
<p>It's been shown that if you stop drilling in the Bakken, the wells have a 38% annual decline rate. This means that without constant drilling, a Bakken well will be dead in less than three years... Indeed, this is already proving to be the case.</p>
<p>As the number of wells being drilled in the Bakken has leveled off, the amount of oil being produced didn't level off — <em>it declined:</em></p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/04/17967/bakken-shale-well-production-decline-rate.jpg" border="0" alt="Bakken Shale Well Production Decline Rate" title="Bakken Shale Well Production Decline Rate" width="600" />Unlike with conventional fields, you can't maintain constant production in <a href="http://www.energyandcapital.com/resources/shale-gas-stocks">shale plays</a> without constant drilling. And that's expensive.</p>
<p>Oil analyst Arthur Berman of Labyrinth Consulting Services says there was no improvement in Bakken well efficiency between 2010 and 2011; in some cases, it's actually taking increased numbers of wells just to <span style="text-decoration: underline;">maintain</span> production levels.</p>
<p>He says the same phenomenon is happening in other shale plays, like the Eagle Ford in Texas.</p>
<p>Some will call me a pessimist. I like the term <em>realist.</em></p>
<p>To become oil independent, we'd have to produce at least another nine million barrels of oil per day.</p>
<p>Right now the Bakken is giving us 6% of that — 575,000 barrels per day — and that's <em>after </em>production has increased there 1,000% in seven years. Think how much it would cost to take that to nine million barrels per day...</p>
<p>Oh, and then have a look at the current trajectory of oil prices:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 1px solid black;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/04/17968/crude-oil-prices-2009-2013.jpg" border="0" alt="Crude Oil Prices 2009 - 2013" title="Crude Oil Prices 2009 - 2013" /></p>
<p>I checked with Common Sense, and he said prices should be going down if there was enough oil to satiate demand.</p>
<p>I called for $100 oil last week, and I'm standing by it.</p>
<p>As I've been telling you for over half a decade now (this week marks six years for me at the <em>Energy and Capital</em> desk), the remaining oil we have is heavier, sourer, and much more expensive to extract and refine into the products we need. This continues to hold true with shale oil.</p>
<p>Natural gas, however, is a bit different...</p>
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<p>Dr. Oz normally gives good health tips on his popular TV show. But in a recent episode, he actually talked about an incredible investment opportunity.</p>
<p>He talked about a groundbreaking cancer screen system that could not only save your life but also <span style="text-decoration: underline;">make you a millionaire for as little as $5,000.</span></p>
<p>In short, it's a hand-held device that makes cancer visible to the naked eye. <a href="http://www.angelnexus.com/ta/?loc=web&adid=1901">You can see the device in action here.</a></p><hr size="1" /></div></p>
<p><strong>Oil is So Last Century</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.energyandcapital.com/resources/natural-gas-companies">Natural gas</a> has always been oil's bastard brother. It's flared off as a waste byproduct, for crying out loud.</p>
<p>But no more. Natural gas can <em>and should</em> be a critical fuel for the United States and the world.</p>
<p>As oil prices have steadily marched upward since 2009, natural gas prices have steadily fallen.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 1px solid black;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/04/17969/natural-gas-prices-2009-2013.jpg" border="0" alt="Natural Gas Prices 2009 - 2013" title="Natural Gas Prices 2009 - 2013" /></p>
<p>I like the investment scenario this presents because unlike oil — which is increasing in price, thereby driving up prices for all its related products — natural gas prices are falling... and expected to remain near decade lows for some time.</p>
<p>What does that mean? It means all of the products associated with natural gas will be cheap, offering higher profit margins to related companies and their shareholders.</p>
<p>Also unlike oil, where the stuff coming from shale is heavy and sour, natural gas is natural gas is natural gas.</p>
<p>Natural gas at $3.00 per million BTU is expected to save households that burn it for heat an average of $926 per year by 2015 and as much as $2,000 per year by 2035.</p>
<p>What's more, environmental regulations will force 36 gigawatts' worth of coal plants to close by 2022.</p>
<p>Do you think we'll replace them with new plants that burn oil... or natural gas?</p>
<p>They'll be natural gas, of course. More than 60% of new generating capacity between now and 2035 will come from natural gas. They burn clean and are easy to build.</p>
<p>And according to IHS Global Insight, low-cost natural gas in the Northeast and Midwest will boost the country's manufacturing output 5% by 2035. The Youngstown-Warren Chamber of Commerce in Ohio says it's already added 1,500 steel jobs as a result.</p>
<p>Chemical companies like Dow (NYSE: DOW) and Sasol (NYSE: SSL) are coming back after having left in the 1990s. The number of natural gas-fueled cars is growing rapidly. And Shell's (NYSE: RDS) spending $4 billion to build the first gas-processing plant in the Northeast, and could bring as many as 10,000 jobs with it.</p>
<p>Folks, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">if natural gas were oil, it would cost $25 per barrel.</span></p>
<p>We're undergoing a natural gas renaissance, not an oil boom. It's a renaissance that will add 870,000 direct natural gas jobs to the U.S. economy by 2015 and 1.66 million by 2035. Indirectly, estimates show natural gas has already created one million jobs and will create another 1.5 million by 2030.</p>
<p>When I look at the Bakken, Marcellus, Haynesville, Eagle Ford, and Barnett shales, I don't see profits and energy security from oil...</p>
<p>I see it from natural gas.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2013-01-23T14:44:21Z2013-01-23T14:44:21Z3009Nick HodgeOn The Constitution, Gun Rights, Criminal Bankers, and SilverThe Federal Reserve has never been an agent of the government; it is a creation of the bankers. You see, the government cannot control the banks because the banks control the government.<p style="text-align: center;"><em>"I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies…" — Thomas Jefferson to John Adams</em></p>
<p>Last Saturday, I did two things: 1. I bought an AR-15; 2. I bought physical silver.</p>
<p>As an analyst, commentator, and concerned citizen, I feel it's important you understand why. Plus you read this letter to get moneymaking insights and opinions that cover the broad scope of the entire market...</p>
<p>What could be a better insight than telling you exactly where and why my skin is in the game?</p>
<p>Let's begin with a reading of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.</em></p>
<p>Now a definition of infringe:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/03/17916/rights-infringement.jpg" border="0" alt="Rights Infringement" title="Rights Infringement" /></p>
<p>And now the first three gun control measures being proposed by President Obama, as printed by the <em>Wall Street Journal:</em></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Requiring background checks for all gun buyers [needs congressional approval]</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Ban certain semiautomatic rifles [needs congressional approval]</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Require a 10-round limit on ammunition magazines [needs congressional approval]</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Now, I've taken a few logic, ethics, and rhetoric courses in my day... and the pathos here is in the toilet.</p>
<p>Any move to require something, to ban something, or to limit something is, by definition, <em>infringing.</em></p>
<p>The Constitution is being violated — and it sets a very scary precedent. Your supposedly inherent rights are being dismantled before your very eyes.</p>
<p>Even more alarming, a good chunk of the zombified populace seems to condone it. In a survey of 1,500 adults last week, Pew found that 58% favor a ban on semi-automatic weapons.</p>
<p>I'll let Benjamin Franklin tell you what's wrong with this:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px; text-align: center;"><em>"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. </em>" <em>— Benjamin Franklin, 1759</em></p>
<p>I refuse to give up essential liberty. I fully believe a right not exercised is a right lost. And I'm not alone...</p>
<p>As I filled out the background check (a check is an infringement, by definition) paperwork so I could legally bear my new arm, many others were doing the same.</p>
<p>The scene was the same at each of the dozens of booths selling them at a Maryland gun show. Thousands were crowded up and down the aisles. These weren't gun nuts. These weren't tinfoil hat people. These were men and women of all ages expressing a right they fear losing.</p>
<p>The 50-something man in pleated khakis and Oxford shirt pressing on the carbon copies beside me said the assault weapon he was buying was his first firearm. He didn't even know that much about them: “I just want to express my opposition to the government's response,” he said. “I'm tired of them punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty.”</p>
<p>And speaking of crimes, check out a visual representation of the FBI's most recent murder statistics, and tell me how any rational mind could come to the conclusion that rifles should be banned before hammers...<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/03/17917/us-murders-by-weapon-according-to-fbi.jpg" border="0" alt="U.S. Murders by Weapon according to FBI" title="U.S. Murders by Weapon according to FBI" />Don't be bullied by emotional irrationality. Know your rights, embrace them, exercise them.</p>
<p><strong>Buy Silver</strong></p>
<p>I drove directly from the gun show to my local coin dealer to <a href="http://www.1stfederalcoin.com/HD13SVEG" target="_blank">buy silver coins.</a></p>
<p>Simply put, the bankers control the government. This has been the case ever since the formation of the Federal Reserve, and was further solidified with the removal of the gold standard.</p>
<p>From <em>How the Bankers Stole America</em>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">For the most part, the American public believes that the Federal government receives money via the taxes collected from the citizens. This money in turn is what pays for all of the services and programs needed to keep the United States functioning. However, this is not the case at all, and instead, not one penny paid to the government by the people actually pays for any services or programs.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The money collected from the citizens goes directly to the privately owned Federal Reserve. This is the way that the Federal Reserve actually works: The Federal Reserve loans money to, and buys the debts of the United States government. However, the banks do not really have the money so when they need it, they just print more. The money that they print is not worth anything because there is nothing backing it. In the past the United States Dollar was backed by a "Gold Standard" and that was what determined the value of the currency.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Whenever a person hears the term, "Federal Reserve," they assume that it is a government agency which controls the finances of the government. Not so fast, the Federal Reserve is actually owned by private banking interests. In 1913 President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the "Federal Reserve Act."</p>
<p>How did this happen?</p>
<p align="LEFT">It was conceived in 1907 at a secret meeting in Jekyll Island, Georgia, attended by Senator Nelson Aldrich (whose daughter married John D. Rockefeller Jr.), representatives from the Rockefeller-owned National City Bank and J.P. Morgan & Co., the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and a few others.</p>
<p>Out of this meeting came the Monetary Commission Report and the Aldrich Bill.</p>
<p>J.P. Morgan then financed both sides of the presidential election in 1912. And when the Republicans failed to get it passed, it was snuck through by the Democrats after Woodrow Wilson took office on a hasty Christmas vote in 1913 as a measure to restrict Wall Street's power. (They always frame things as being in your best interest.)</p>
<p><strong>The Federal Reserve as never been an agent of the government. It is a creation of the bankers meant to control the currency.</strong></p>
<p>From Gary Allen's famed 1971 classic <em>None Dare Call It Conspiracy:</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The public is led to believe that our government borrows from "the people" through savings bonds. Actually, however, only a small percentage of the national debt is held by individuals in this form. Most government bonds, except those held by the government itself through its trust funds, are held by vast banking firms known as international banks. For centuries there has been big money to be made by international bankers in the financing of governments and kings.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Since the keystone of the international banking empires has been government bonds, it has been in the interest of these international bankers to encourage government debt. The higher The debt the more the interest.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">But while wars and revolutions have been useful to international bankers in gaining or increasing control over governments, the key to such control has always been control of money. You can control a government if you have it in your debt; a creditor is in a position to demand the privileges of monopoly from the sovereign. Money-seeking governments have granted monopolies in state banking, natural resources, oil concessions and transportation. However, the monopoly which the international financiers most covet is control over a nation's money.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Under this system, observed Reginald McKenna, President of the Midlands Bank of England, in 1939: "Those that create and issue the money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in their hands the destiny of the people." Once the government is in debt to the bankers it is at their mercy.</p>
<p>You see, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">the government cannot control the banks because the banks control the government.</span></p>
<p>When J.P. Morgan spawned this plan a century ago, the national debt was $5 billion. Wilson promptly entered WWI and drove it to $25.5 billion. Roosevelt and Truman drove it from there to $260 billion during the 30s and 40s. After 1965, U.S. debt began to increase faster than GDP...</p>
<p>Reagan and Bush 1 quadrupled it from 1980 to 1992. By the time Bush 2 took office, the debt was $5.7 trillion. He ran it to $10.7 trillion. And Obama has tacked on another $6 trillion in four years.</p>
<p>The banks and those who run them got rich the entire time. <strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>There have been Establishment bankers in every single presidential administration since Wilson.</strong></p>
<p>How have you faired?</p>
<p>The bankers use this control of government to write laws and make decisions in their favor.</p>
<p>This is why the banks got a <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/government-condones-banking-crimes/3863">bailout</a> after destroying the economy while you were left to struggle.</p>
<p>This is why the banks get to manipulate LIBOR and only face paltry monetary penalties, while ordinary citizens are incarcerated at the highest per capita rate in the world.</p>
<p>This is why the banks get to launder money for terrorists and drug cartels and rogue states and can laugh in the face of the Justice Department.</p>
<p>This is why nearly every bill is filled with pork that further enriches corporations and the banks that own them.</p>
<p>This is why the banks have absolutely no interest in helping you out.</p>
<p>They've even set it up so they profit by making more and more people dependent on government... there aren't 40-some million Americans on food stamps by accident. </p>
<p>Guess who administers the food stamp program? It's not the government. It's JP Morgan.</p>
<p>As the <em>Daily Beast </em>reports:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">According to the website of the Agriculture Department — which oversees the food stamp program — three companies administer the bulk of EBT card programs in 49 states (the state of Montana runs its own program) through multi-year contracts ranging from five to seven years. JP Morgan Electronic Financial Services, Inc. (a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase), which entered the welfare market in 2004 by acquiring Citicorp Electronic Financial Services, has contracts with 24 states and two U.S. territories. Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a subsidiary of Xerox, has 15 state contracts. And eFunds Corporation, a subsidiary of Fidelity National Information Services (not connected to Fidelity Investments), handles the EBT cards for 10 states and one U.S. territory.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Just how lucrative JP Morgan’s EBT state contracts are is hard to say, because total national data on EBT contracts are not reported. But thanks to a combination of public-records requests and contracts that are available online, here’s what we do know: 18 of the 24 states JP Morgan handles have been contracted to pay the bank up to $560,492,596.02 since 2004. Since 2007, Florida has been contracted to pay JP Morgan $90,351,202.22. Pennsylvania’s seven-year contract totaled $112,541,823.27. New York’s seven-year contract totaled $126,394,917.</p>
<p>The more people on welfare, the more lucrative for the banks.</p>
<p>They have an incentive to keep you down. And judging by the bank accounts of millions of Americans, they're doing a damn good job. </p>
<table style="width: 300px;" border="5" align="right">
<tr>
<td><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img style="float: left; margin: 5px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/03/17919/george-carlin-american-dream.jpg" border="0" alt="George Carlin American Dream" title="George Carlin American Dream" />The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people – white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on – continue to elect these rich ****suckers who don't give a f*ck about them. They don't care about you at all. At all. At all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on, the fact that Americans probably will remain willfully ignorant... Because the owners of this country know the truth, it's called The American Dream, cause you'd have to be asleep to believe it. --George Carlin</span></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>They also have a vested interest is keeping you a believer in “The System,” in the American Dream.</p>
<p>Because the dollars they're getting are only worth something if you <em>believe</em> they're worth something. They don't want you holding precious metals; they want you out there racking up credit card debt, student loans, and mortgages to keep the interest payments coming.</p>
<p>They want your entire retirement wrapped up in funds and stocks they control and get a percentage of.</p>
<p>One of the best ways to protest this is to <a href="http://www.1stfederalcoin.com/HD13SVEG" target="_blank">buy precious metals.</a> And like with purchasing firearms, many are starting to realize it...</p>
<p>After I paid for my 16 ounces of silver last weekend, I asked the man behind the counter how much they'd been selling. “600 ounces in the past week,” he said. “It's been crazy.”</p>
<p>This is one small shop in one small Baltimore suburb.</p>
<p>As <em>Reuters</em> reported this week:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">U.S. American Eagle gold and silver coin sales have been exceptionally strong in January, building on a late 2012 rally as collectors scramble to snap up newly minted 2013 coins and investors seek refuge from U.S. economic uncertainty.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">As of Jan. 15, silver Eagle sales for the month exceeded 5 million ounces, data from the U.S. Mint's website showed. At that rate, sales would surpass an all-time monthly high of 6.1 million ounces set in January 2012.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">With two weeks remaining in January, gold coin sales were 110,500 ounces, compared with 127,000 ounces for all of January 2012, on track for the highest monthly tally since 1999.</p>
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<p>This falls right in line with what we've been recommending here at <em>Wealth Daily</em> for years.</p>
<p>I've published them before, but here are five things you can and should be doing to fight this financial terrorism:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>1. Get out of debt. Now.</strong></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">Debt in this country, both public and private, has become a chronic condition. Using debt to finance consumption is suicidal.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>2. Build cash.</strong></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">This goes for investment accounts and for your home. Now is a time to hold large cash balances in your accounts, so that you're liquid enough to take advantage of the bargains that we'll see down the road. We'll be sure to bring many of them to your attention in these pages.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">You should also have enough cash on hand to cover your living expenses for a minimum of three months. Have it in your possession.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>3. Buy gold and silver.</strong></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">Right now, a drop in gold prices is a gift because the long-term trend is higher... same goes for silver.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">The time to do this is now, when we have a discount window available. Chances of both gold and silver going higher are simply too high to pass up. Look at these holdings as an insurance policy. Your best hope is they become family heirlooms.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;"><a href="http://www.1stfederalcoin.com/HD13SVEG" target="_blank">Buy it, stash it, and keep it secret.</a></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>4. Guns and Groceries</strong></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">It's a noble and sublime feeling to be confident in your ability to provide for your family.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">Get a long-term food storage program in place. At a minimum, you should be 100% confident in your ability to live for a few weeks without having to go to the grocery store. Prepare to the level you feel is practical.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">A while back, we took a poll. It turns out 100% of criminals prefer their victims to be unarmed... Own a gun and possess the ability to use it under duress.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>5. Take pride in your liberty.</strong></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="padding-left: 30px;">Let your opinion be heard not through the prism of left or right, but through the lens of right and wrong.<br /><br />Make your time here what you want it to be, and make sure you're financially secure enough to do it.</p>
<p>Nobody's looking out for you but <span style="text-decoration: underline;">you.</span> </p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2013-01-18T14:46:02Z2013-01-18T14:46:02Z3914Nick HodgeCrude Oil InvestmentsWe need to start producing at least 8 million more barrels of oil per day in the next few years. Because the world has never increased crude production this fast, I'm extremely bullish on crude oil and the companies that will be producing it.<p>How long has it been since you've heard the phrase “$100 oil”?</p>
<p>We've peaked that threshold only for brief periods over the past two years, but have come nowhere close to the $145 we saw in the summer of 2008.</p>
<p>I truly believe the only thing that kept oil from shooting through $150 then was a little thing called global economic recession. After hitting $145 in July 2008, we saw $31 oil in time for Christmas that year.</p>
<p>In the four years since, much has changed...</p>
<p>We're undergoing U.S. shale revolution. There was an Arab Spring. We saw an extended Euro crisis.</p>
<p>And as all this has unfolded — some of it bullish for oil, some of it bearish — one thing has remained constant: <em>Oil prices have steadily marched higher.</em></p>
<p><strong>Get In Tune, Get In the Money</strong></p>
<p>Since bottoming out in the low $30s, crude oil has turned in a constantly appreciative performance...</p>
<p>By summer 2009 we were back to $70. Summer 2010 saw $80. And by spring 2011 we were back over, if only temporarily, $100.</p>
<p>We've been see-sawing between $80 and $100 since then, which is why I've been advocating going long oil any time it breaks below $85. That's most easily accomplished with the ProShares Crude Oil ETF (NYSE: UCO).</p>
<p>Since 2010, readers of mine have done that for profit <span style="text-decoration: underline;">nine times.</span> Personally, I've done it five times. You can see that trade history below.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/03/17887/uco-trade-history.jpg" border="0" alt="Crude Oil ETF (NYSE: UCO)" title="Crude Oil ETF (NYSE: UCO)" width="600" /></p>
<p>In that most recent November trade, I made over $1,000 in 15 days simply because I was in tune with the price of oil.</p>
<p>I've gotten pretty comfortable with this range. After all, it's been exactly the same since late 2010. You could just rinse and repeat.</p>
<p>But now, I'm seeing something different...</p>
<p><strong>The Return of $100 Oil</strong></p>
<p>I've told you many times before, but it bears repeating: The world consumes more oil than it produces.</p>
<p>You can see it plain as day on the Energy Information Administration website. The most recent data available show the world produced 74.061 million barrels of oil per day; it consumed 87.616 million.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/01/17657/world-oil-consumption-and-production.jpg" border="0" alt="World Oil Consumption and Production" title="World Oil Consumption and Production" width="600" height="223" /></p>
<p>Some of the difference is made up with refinery gains and natural gas liquids. And this is why you sometimes see “Total Oil Production” along with “Crude Oil Production.” But even with the addition of those other liquids, global consumption is greater than production by some 531,000 barrels per day.</p>
<p>It's this difference that keeps the pressure on oil prices. All things being equal, it's this difference that allows me to get comfortable with a crude oil price range and trade it back and forth.</p>
<p>Now, for the first time in a few years, all things aren't equal. The global economy is starting to improve. And that means the world is going to consume <span style="text-decoration: underline;">even more</span> oil, widening the gap between demand and supply — and driving prices even higher...</p>
<p>Take a look at <a href="http://www.energyandcapital.com/resources/brent-vs-wti">crude oil prices</a> over the past five years:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/01/17663/5-year-crude-oil-price.png" border="0" alt="Crude Oil Price Chart" title="Crude Oil Price Chart" width="590" height="225" /></p>
<p>There is a clear upward trajectory. And over the past year, the range has been getting more and more narrow.</p>
<p>A breakout is upon us.</p>
<p>And if oil prices have been slowly gaining steam for the past four years with tepid global recovery, where do you think they'll head as the recovery pace quickens?</p>
<p>By 2020, the International Energy Agency says the world will need 99 million barrels per day.</p>
<p>The only problem with that? The world has NEVER produced more than 91 million barrels per day.</p>
<p>So we need to start producing at least 8 million more barrels of oil per day in the next few years, roughly the equivalent of what the U.S currently produces.</p>
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<p>Oddly enough, the U.S. Air Force is now using it in its fleet of B-52 bombers.</p>
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<p>Because the world has never increased crude production this fast, I'm extremely bullish on crude oil and the companies that will be producing it.</p>
<p>During this “shale boom,” the world has added five million barrels per day of production. We'll need another 1.6 shale booms to keep pace with demand over the next seven years.</p>
<p>And this is where we come back to one of the major tenets of Peak Oil: flow rates.</p>
<p>One or two or ten trillion barrels in the ground does us absolutely no good until it's extracted.</p>
<p>Think about it this way...</p>
<p><em>I need you to fill up a five-gallon bucket of water. You have two methods of doing so: a hose and a block of ice.</em></p>
<p><em>Using the hose is easy and takes seconds. It turns on and off with ease. This is the light, sweet crude we've been producing for decades.</em></p>
<p><em>But this new oil we're finding, while there is a lot of it, is much harder to get — like the block of ice. It takes a different technique, it takes much longer, and you can't get as much as fast.</em></p>
<p>This is where the global oil market is now.</p>
<p>The spigots — Ghawar, Cantarell, Prudhoe Bay — have all peaked and are declining at 8%-10% per year. The remaining oil is more difficult and expensive to produce and refine.</p>
<p>It's because of this reality that oil prices and oil stocks will rise rapidly as the global economy improves...</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2013-01-16T17:46:37Z2013-01-16T17:46:37Z2991Nick Hodge3D Printing Brings Manufacturing to the MassesI've been showing you the benefits of 3D printing for some time now. The technology has existed in its current form for about five years. And it's taking off like wildfire. So are the related stocks.<p>I've been showing you the benefits of 3D printing for some time now.</p>
<p>It's the technology that allows you to design custom parts and products on a computer... and then simply print them out.</p>
<p>As <em>Research & Development Magazine </em>recently put it:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">While traditional paper printers use a moving toner cartridge head to form lines of text, adding row upon row of toner as the paper moves through the printer, 3D printing works much the same way. Instead of toner, however, a free-moving printer head precisely deposits layer upon layer of plastic or other material to create a solid object from the bottom up.</p>
<p>Aircraft parts. Car parts. Appliance parts. Shoes. Even guns.</p>
<p>You can design all these things and then print them out with a 3D printer.</p>
<p>The technology has existed in its current form for about five years. And it's taking off like wildfire.</p>
<p>So are the related stocks...</p>
<p>Here's how the two main plays I'm watching in the space have performed over the past three months (a timespan for which the Dow is negative):</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 1px solid black;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/02/17739/3d-printing-stocks.jpg" border="0" alt="3D Printing Stocks" title="3D Printing Stocks" width="600" /></p>
<p>They're up between 40%-70% in just a couple of months. But there are thousands of percent still to come.</p>
<p><strong>Going Hyperbolic</strong></p>
<p>Keep in mind Home Depot (NYSE: HD) has gone up 15,000% as you read that...</p>
<p>NASA is already using <a href="http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/3d-printing-stocks/2448">3D printing technology</a> to reduce space exploration costs. The U.S. military sees it as the key to future victories. Boeing (NYSE: BA) is using it to make aircraft engine and body parts. Rolls-Royce has one, too. And there are more than 30,000 people walking around right now with 3D-printed titanium replacement hips.</p>
<p>These industrial behemoths adopting 3D printing is what has gotten the stocks to where they are today, up as much as 270% in a year.</p>
<p>But it's the next level of 3D printer buyers that will take these stocks into +1,000% territory and higher — just like Home Depot — as it becomes Harry Homeowner's do-it-yourself mecca...</p>
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<p>As NPR noted last week:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The first key to thinking about 3-D printers is this: Do not think printer. Think magic box that creates any object you can imagine.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">In the box, razor-thin layers of powdered material (acrylic, nylon, silver, whatever) pile one on top of the other, and then, voila — you've got a shoe, or a cup, or a ring, or an iPhone case.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Another thing to keep in mind about 3-D printing: It democratizes who gets to be in the manufacturing business. You don't need a giant factory and million-dollar machines. You just need $500 and a garage.</p>
<p>That's the key: <span style="text-decoration: underline;">$500 and a garage.</span> <img style="float: right; margin: 5px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/02/17740/3d-printer.jpg" border="0" alt="3D Printer" title="3D Printer" width="350" /></p>
<p>Everyone gets a level playing field to become Henry Ford.</p>
<p>As the price of the printers continues to fall, demand will spike sharply.</p>
<p>Soon, you'll start seeing 3D printers on workbenches across America...</p>
<p>And that's what will send the companies into Home Depot territory.</p>
<p>Even better, biotech companies are experimenting with the technology to print out replacement human tissues and body parts, which will open up a whole new frontier of profits.</p>
<p>I've been researching one that developed a 3D bioprinter that can print human tissue for drug testing, so no animals or people are harmed.</p>
<p>All this will add up to a new trillion-dollar industry.</p>
<p>The companies operating inside it are still tiny compared to the opportunity...</p>
<p>You'll want to carve out your long-term position now.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2013-01-09T14:56:40Z2013-01-09T14:56:40Z2965Nick HodgePersonal Financial ManagementIn these early days of 2013, I thought it prudent to offer some quick tips on broader money management strategies that can complement specific investment recommendations.<p>In these pages, we often discuss what the market is doing and where you can put your money to benefit.</p>
<p>But in these early days of 2013, I thought it prudent to offer some quick tips on broader money management strategies that can complement specific investment recommendations.</p>
<p>It's not until you're managing your entire financial life — not just buying stocks — that you can truly maximize your wealth-building potential.</p>
<p>So to help start off the New Year on the right fiscal foot, here are a few things you should consider:</p>
<p><strong>1. Track Everything</strong></p>
<p>Keep a budget that tracks your savings, spending, and investments. It should include all bills, debts, incoming cash flow, assets, and home equity... with a dynamic total of your net worth.</p>
<p>Many are downloadable around the Web, but I created one in Excel that I use diligently. <a href="http://www.angelpub.com/ea/budget-template.xls" target="_blank">You can get if for free here.</a></p>
<p>Enter the beginning balance of you primary checking/savings account each month in the upper left-hand corner. Then fill in bills, withdraws, deposits, and other expenditures during the month. It also includes spaces for all debts and assets, as well as a space for your home value relative to what you still owe on it, if that applies.</p>
<p>The template is built to automatically total monthly bills, withdraws, spending, incoming cash, assets, debt, net worth, and more.</p>
<p>Put every single financial transaction on it: car payments, cable, phone, utility bills, student loans, IRA, brokerage accounts, savings, credit card, pay checks.</p>
<p>It's a great tool to see a snapshot of your finances on one page — so you can identify spending habits, problem debts, cash flow patterns, and more — and then start to use that information to make beneficial financial planning decisions.</p>
<p><em>What can I cut out? How can I maximize savings? If I'm not already, how can I get myself debt-free?</em></p>
<p>These are all questions you should be asking yourself. And an overview of all things in your financial life will help you start answering them.</p>
<p>(I even track every gallon of gas I buy and every mile I drive. If you want that spreadsheet, <a href="http://www.angelpub.com/ea/gas-use-template.xls">it is available here for free.</a>)</p>
<p><strong>2. Max Out Retirement Accounts</strong></p>
<p>Max out any 401(k) or Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees IRA (SIMPLE IRA) offered by your employer. Any match they offer is free money, and you should take advantage.</p>
<p>Outside of any employer-related plans, you should also open an individual retirement account (IRA). Your income will determine whether this is a Roth IRA or Traditional IRA. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/retirement/guide/IRAs/?iid=EL" target="_blank">Here is</a> a fully interactive <em>Money Magazine</em> explanation of how to choose which is best for you.</p>
<p>Whichever IRA you choose, the maximum contributions are the same, as explained by that same <em>Money Magazine</em> tool:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">If you're younger than 50, your 2012 contributions to a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA are limited to $5,000 or the total of your taxable compensation, whichever is smaller. If you're 50 or over before the end of the year, you're allowed to contribute up to an additional $1,000 for a total yearly contribution of $6,000; this is the IRS's way of encouraging you to save more in the final years before retirement.</p>
<p>Make sure your IRA is fully funded before you open any other type of standard brokerage account. You can use it just like a standard to brokerage account to buy stocks, options, CDs, and bonds.</p>
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<p><strong>3. Consult a Tax Professional</strong></p>
<p>I don't believe in paying someone to manage your money. I wholeheartedly believe you should choose your <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/investing-on-your-own/3741">investments on your own</a>, based on your own research. But hiring a tax professional is a very wise idea...</p>
<p>I know how to read the market. I know how to buy stocks and funds and options. I have little expertise on the egregiously complex U.S. tax code. So I found someone who charges a flat fee to answer all my tax questions and file them for me. You should do the same.</p>
<p>Ask this person as many questions as possible. Tell them about all the things you learned and have questions about from the budget you're now keeping.</p>
<p>He or she will alert you to tax-saving ideas and strategies you didn't know about. These ideas and strategies will more than pay for the flat fee.</p>
<p>They can help you with health savings accounts (HSAs), tax-loss selling, pre-paying deductible expenses, donating stock, and exactly which types of retirement accounts you should use.</p>
<p>They can <em>and should</em> be your sounding board for deciding why and how to make financial planning decisions.</p>
<p>The guy I use is in business for himself, charges one flat fee for the year, and isn't concerned with earning commission by selling me financial products.</p>
<p>Once you do these things, you'll be in a prime position to take full advantage of the investment ideas presented by <em>Wealth Daily</em> and its editors.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2013-01-04T17:31:13Z2013-01-04T17:31:13Z3881Nick HodgeOil, Oil Stocks to Head HigherWhat happens when six of the top ten oil-producing countries are now also on the list of top oil-consuming countries?<p>I have a secret.</p>
<p>Amid all the talk of an “oil boom,” the world still consumes more oil than it produces.</p>
<p>It's an open secret. The EIA publishes the data right on its website. Here's an unadulterated image of it:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/01/17657/world-oil-consumption-and-production.jpg" border="0" alt="World Oil Consumption and Production" title="World Oil Consumption and Production" /></p>
<p>There it is, plain as day.</p>
<p>In the most recent year for which there's data, the world consumed 87.421 million barrels of oil per day.</p>
<p>It produced 87.085 million.</p>
<p>Boys and girls, what happens when demand is greater than supply?</p>
<p>That's right! Prices go up.</p>
<p>They started 2011 at $91.58 and finished at $99.73.</p>
<p>And have a look at the broader five-year trend:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2013/01/17663/5-year-crude-oil-price.png" border="0" alt="5-Year Crude Oil Price" title="5-Year Crude Oil Price" /></p>
<p>When the global economy isn't experiencing economic death throes, the market knows oil should head higher. And that's what it's done since 2009, when Texas crude bottomed out at $37.00.</p>
<p>We live on the cusp, not realizing how close we are each day to not having enough. But the just-in-time method has weak links, doesn't it?</p>
<p>New York and New Jersey rationed gas by license plate number just two months ago.</p>
<p><strong>What Happens When...</strong></p>
<p>Six of the top ten oil-producing countries are now also on the list of top oil-consuming countries?</p>
<p>But here's the thing: Their rate of consumption is growing much faster than production growth, especially in Saudi Arabia and Brazil. I wouldn't be surprised if Mexico made the top consumers list some year soon as well.</p>
<p>When these countries had smaller populations and economies, they didn't need as much oil. Now that they're growing, they need more of their oil for themselves. And that means less oil available for the global market — and for importers like the U.S. and China.</p>
<p>Prices have to rise.</p>
<p>I've said it before and I'll say it again: I go long oil when it's below $85.</p>
<p>I trade it with the ProShares Ultra Crude Oil ETF (NYSE: UCO). I've had<em> Early Advantage </em>readers do it ten times now. And we've never lost on it.</p>
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<p>The <a href="http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/2013-oil-price-forecast/2668">global oil market</a> is so tight that one positive economic announcement or one supply disruption sends prices soaring.</p>
<p>And even with the shale revolution we — and now everyone else — have been telling you about, the United States <em>still</em> consumes 18.9 million barrels per day while producing 10.13 million barrels. So much for oil independence.</p>
<p>However, higher prices do make shale drillers more profitable.</p>
<p>That's why energy investors love high oil prices. It makes profiting so much easier.</p>
<p>Oil's gone from $88.00 to $93.00 over the past few days...</p>
<p>It's left my portfolio a bit higher — and me scratching my head at respected analysts who were calling for $40 oil within 12 months this past spring.</p>
<p>Some people will never get it.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2013-01-02T17:33:07Z2013-01-02T17:33:07Z2946Nick HodgeSay Bye-Bye to Gun Rights, Habeas CorpusThe government is bearing down on citizens, imprisoning us at the highest rate in the world, coming after our rights, and militarizing local police forces while simultaneously letting their pals get away with heinous crimes.<p>They're taking you over the cliff.</p>
<p>They're coming for your guns (even handguns and shotguns).</p>
<p>Habeas corpus, which protects citizens from illegal detention by the government, is on the verge of being stripped away.</p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security has purchased hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point ammunition — enough to kill every man, woman, and child in the country. These rounds are illegal in international warfare, so they must be used domestically.</p>
<p>The Forefathers are rolling in their graves.</p>
<p>But the only dead presidents the current political and big business establishment care about are those on the dollars they're raking in as they economically pin down and strip the rights of the rest of the country.</p>
<p>Details below.</p>
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<p><strong>Dianne Feinstein's 2013 Gun Grab</strong></p>
<p>The California Senator just announced what her gun-banning legislation would contain. The <a href="http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons" target="_blank">summary</a> says the bill will “stop the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices.”</p>
<p>Don't think for a second this is just AR-15s like the one used in Newtown. This bill would also ban the sale, transfer, importation, or manufacturing of “certain other semiautomatic rifles, handguns, shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and have one military characteristic.”</p>
<p>This comes from a lady who possessed a concealed handgun permit and was quoted as saying, “I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out, I was going to take them with me."</p>
<p>But even greater than the hypocrisy is the notion that the government wants to disarm the citizens while making large purchases of high-powered ammunition for domestic use, as I <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/the-system-is-rigged-by-politicians-and-bankers/3626">covered</a> back in August.</p>
<p>Use your critical thinking skills, dear reader. Put the pieces together.</p>
<p><strong>The Path to Political Prisoners</strong></p>
<p>The “shall not be infringed” Second Amendment isn't all they're shredding...</p>
<p>Tucked away in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act is a <a href="http://rt.com/usa/news/ndaa-indefinite-detention-trial-403/" target="_blank">provision</a> that gives President Obama the power to put any American citizen behind bars who is determined to have committed a “beligerent act.”</p>
<p>It also says these citizens can be imprisoned indefinitely “without trial.”</p>
<p>More than 80 Senators sneakily reapproved that power in a vote last Friday, on the eve of Christmas weekend.</p>
<p>Rand Paul rightly called it an “abomination.”</p>
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<p>Earlier this morning, John Miller verified a $17,544 deposit in his bank account while sipping an espresso.</p>
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<p>It is. Because as we've been discussing weekly, the government is bearing down on citizens, imprisoning us at the highest rate in the world, coming after our rights, and militarizing local police forces while simultaneously letting their pals get away with heinous crimes.</p>
<p>And with this removal of habeas corpus, they can theoretically throw you in prison if you speak out against them.</p>
<p>That's tyranny of the highest order.</p>
<p><strong>Rigged Game</strong></p>
<p>Hollywood hunk Matt Damon had a realization this week that I had long ago.</p>
<p>After supporting President Obama in 2008, he said during the recent election that he wouldn't mind if he was a one-term president, because he'd rather have a “one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done.”</p>
<p>And in an interview that will be released next month, he's quoted as saying:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>It’s easier now more than ever in my life to feel the fix is in, the game is rigged and no matter how hard you work to change things, it just doesn’t matter....</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>We’re at a point where politicians don’t really get any benefit from engaging with long-term issues. Instead, it’s all about the next election cycle. Those guys in the House don’t do anything now but run for office.</em></p>
<p>Welcome to the club, Matt.</p>
<p>Of course, it's not just the House. The game is rigged from both chambers of Congress, multiple federal departments and agencies, the Fed, and beyond...</p>
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<p>We now know Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told an economist about his plans for “Operation Twist” in the summer of 2011. The woman Ben told about the plan worked for the International Strategy & Investment Group, which then earned double-digit returns on 10-year Treasuries before the plan was announced to the public.</p>
<p>They're the Establishment. You're the public.</p>
<p>They get to make decisions that affect everyone and profit from them before they're announced. You get to be strip-searched and anally penetrated by police on the side of the road (<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2250218/Angel-Ashley-Dobbs-suing-Texas-troopers-shocking-BODY-CAVITY-search-caught-tape.html" target="_blank">this happened</a> in Texas a few weeks ago).</p>
<p>And, of course, they get to steal money from clients (Jon Corzine), rig LIBOR (Citi, Bank of America, JP Morgan, UBS, many more), aid terrorists and rogue states (HSBC), give guns to drug cartels (Justice Department), and commit unconstitutional drone strikes (our president) while you get to be threatened with egregious fines for selling candy cigarettes (<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/soda-shop-warned-candy-cigarette-sales-article-1.1228068" target="_blank">this happened</a> this week in Minnesota).</p>
<p>It's all downright crazy, and you need to be taking steps to insulate yourself against it.</p>
<p>Make sure you know your rights. Here's a link to <a href="http://constitution.hillsdale.edu/" target="_blank">free Constitution courses</a> at an online college.</p>
<p>Seek out like-minded people and discuss these things with them. You'd be surprised how many people share your views. Check out groups that are <a href="http://www.wolf-pac.com/about" target="_blank">fighting this</a> corruption legally.</p>
<p>Take the <a href="http://www.angelnexus.com/o/web/41887" target="_blank">protection of your finances</a> and home into your own hands.</p>
<p>The scent of “us versus them” is heavy in the air.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-28T15:42:17Z2012-12-28T15:42:17Z3872Nick HodgeYear-End Tax and Financial AdviceIt's not until you're managing your entire financial life - not just buying stocks - that you can truly maximize your wealth-building potential. So to help start off the New Year on the right fiscal foot, here are a few things you should consider.<p>In these pages, we often discuss what the market is doing and where you can put your money to benefit.</p>
<p>But in these waning days of 2012, I thought it prudent to offer some quick tips on broader money management strategies that can complement specific investment recommendations.</p>
<p>It's not until you're managing your entire financial life – not just buying stocks – that you can truly maximize your wealth-building potential.</p>
<p>So to help start off the New Year on the right fiscal foot, here are a few things you should consider:</p>
<p><strong>1. Track Everything</strong></p>
<p>Keep a budget that tracks your savings, spending, and investments. It should include all bills, debts, incoming cash flow, assets, and home equity... with a dynamic total of your net worth.</p>
<p>Many are downloadable around the web, but I created one in Excel that I use diligently. You can get if for <a href="http://www.angelpub.com/ea/budget-template.xls" target="_blank">free here.</a></p>
<p>Enter the beginning balance of you primary checking/savings account each month in the upper left-hand corner. Then fill in bills, withdraws, deposits, and other expenditures during the month.</p>
<p>It also includes spaces for all debts and assets, as well as a space for your home value relative to what you still owe on it if that applies.</p>
<p>The template is built to automatically total monthly bills, withdraws, spending, incoming cash, assets, debt, net worth and more.</p>
<p>Put every single financial transaction on it: car payments, cable, phone, utility bills, student loans, IRA, brokerage accounts, savings, credit card, pay checks.</p>
<p>It's a great tool to see a snapshot of your finances on one page... so you can identify spending habits, problem debts, cash flow patterns, and more. And then start to use that information to make beneficial financial planning decisions.</p>
<p>What can you cut out? How can you maximize savings? If I'm not already, how can I get myself debt free?</p>
<p>These are all questions you should be asking yourself. And an overview of all things in your financial life will help you start answering them.</p>
<p>(I even track every gallon of gas I buy and every mile I drive. If you want that spreadsheet, it is available <a href="http://www.angelpub.com/ea/gas-use-template.xls" target="_blank">here for free.</a>)</p>
<p><strong>2. Max Out Retirement Accounts</strong></p>
<p>Max out any 401(k) or Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees IRA (SIMPLE IRA) offered by your employer. Any match they offer is free money and you should take advantage.</p>
<p>Outside of any employer-related plans, you should also open an individual retirement account (IRA).</p>
<p>Your income will determine whether this is a Roth IRA or Traditional IRA. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/retirement/guide/IRAs/?iid=EL" target="_blank">Here is</a> a fully interactive <em>Money Magazine</em> explanation of how to choose which is best for you.</p>
<p>Whichever IRA you choose, the maximum contributions are the same, as explained by that same <em>Money Magazine</em> tool:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">If you're younger than 50, your 2012 contributions to a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA are limited to $5,000 or the total of your taxable compensation, whichever is smaller. If you're 50 or over before the end of the year, you're allowed to contribute up to an additional $1,000 for a total yearly contribution of $6,000; this is the IRS's way of encouraging you to save more in the final years before retirement.</p>
<p>Make sure your IRA is fully funded before you open any other type of standard brokerage account. You can use it just like a standard to brokerage account to buy stocks, options, CDs, and bonds.</p>
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<p><strong>3. Consult a Tax Professional</strong></p>
<p>I don't believe in paying someone to manage your money. I wholeheartedly believe you should choose your investments on your own, based on your own research.</p>
<p>But hiring a tax professional is a very wise idea. I know how to read the market. I know how to buy stocks and funds and options.</p>
<p>I have little expertise on the egregiously complex U.S. tax code. So I found someone who charges a flat fee to answer all my tax questions and file them for me. You should do the same.</p>
<p>Ask this person as many questions as possible. Tell them about all the things you learned and have questions about from the budget you're now keeping.</p>
<p>He or she will alert you to tax-saving ideas and strategies you didn't know about. These ideas and strategies will more than pay for the flat fee.</p>
<p>They can help you with health savings accounts (HSAs), tax-loss selling, pre-paying deductible expenses, donating stock, and exactly which types of retirement accounts you should use. They can and should be your sounding board for deciding why and how to make financial planning decisions.</p>
<p>The guy I use is in business for himself, charges one flat fee for the year, and isn't concerned with earning commission by selling me financial products.</p>
<p>Once you do these things, you'll be in a prime position to take full advantage of the investment ideas presented by <em>Energy & Capital</em> and its editors.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-26T20:11:20Z2012-12-26T20:11:20Z2932Nick HodgeGovernment Condones Banking CrimesWhat HSBC, UBS, and all the rest do to you and millions of others on a daily basis is far worse than any shooting could ever be. Those in power know it, and condone it.<p style="text-align: right;"><em>Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. <br />— Martin Luther King, Jr.</em></p>
<p>I'm fired up. But what's new.</p>
<p>Sandy Hook was a tragedy... 28 people died, the majority of them children. (The media have adopted 26, but I'm pretty sure the shooter and his mother were people.)</p>
<p>Yes, it should make any human quiver.</p>
<p>But 28 deaths is actually only one-third of the 85 gun deaths that occur each and every day in America. Even more die daily from auto accidents.</p>
<p>Yet because it was a mass shooting, it's an outlier. It generates a more visceral reaction. More people take notice.</p>
<p>What really makes me angry is the response of our politicians.<img style="float: right; margin: 7px; border: 0px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/51/17601/barack-obama-crying.jpg" border="0" alt="Barack Obama Crying" title="Barack Obama Crying" width="300" /></p>
<p>Obama stood up there and shed a tear for the loss of innocent life like the collateral damage of his unconstitutional drone strikes haven't killed just as many. (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism says drone strikes killed 2,562 – 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 – 881 were civilians, including 176 children.)</p>
<p>Obama's committed over eight Sandy Hooks. And that's only the beginning of the hypocrisy.</p>
<p>U.S. soldiers in Iraq have reported being forced to sing the following cadence during training:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">I went down to the market, where all the women shop;<br />I pulled out my machete, and I began to chop.<br />I went down to the park, where all the children play;<br />I pulled out my machine gun, and I began to spray.</p>
<p>The U.S. military, which is controlled by the President and Congress, sings songs about mass-murdering children while playing in a park.</p>
<p>So any emotion they've shown over the incident in Connecticut can be classified as nothing more than crocodile tears.</p>
<p>And this still isn't the worst part...</p>
<p>The worst part is that crimes that affect many more people — hundreds of millions or billions, in fact — are systematically conducted by some of the largest companies in the world... and are ignored or downplayed when they're discovered.</p>
<p>The very week before the shooting, the Obama administration told us HSBC would not be prosecuted for aiding Al Qaeda, Mexican drug cartels, and Iran.</p>
<p>We'll teach our soldiers to shoot their children in a park, but when they catch a <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/prison-stocks-for-a-prison-state/3842">multi-billion-dollar bank</a> doing the same thing, your leaders decide it would be bad for business to prosecute them.</p>
<p>Give me a break.</p>
<p>The Department of Justice has indicted dozens of individual citizens for providing the slightest aid to so-called terrorist groups. When 14 U.S. citizens were indicted in 2010 for “providing money, personnel, and services” to a Somali terror group, Attorney General Eric Holder (the same Attorney General who gave automatic assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels that were then used to take innocent lives) said:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The indictments unsealed today shed further light on a deadly pipeline that has routed funding and fighters to the al-Shabaab terror organization from cities across the United States.</em></p>
<p>But when HSBC was caught doing <span style="text-decoration: underline;">the same exact thing</span> in a more coordinated and much larger fashion, the same department decided against indicting because it could jeopardize the bank's business.</p>
<p>So for the record, when a single individual commits an act like this it is a tragedy of the highest order. We should condemn it, offer our thoughts and prayers, and seek new legislation to prevent it from ever happening again...</p>
<p>But when it's done systematically by people with corner offices and who donate heavily to political campaigns, we'll just look the other way.</p>
<p>It's a double-standard. It's disgusting. And it makes my face turn red when I have to watch the president stand up at the podium and say:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We can't accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?</em></p>
<p>He was talking, of course, about taking your guns. The politics aren't too hard for that. Gun rights groups have only given about $4 million in contributions to political candidates this year. That's chump change.</p>
<p>Banks have given $44 million.</p>
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<p>So because one gunman commits an atrocity, the government wants to attack the rights of millions of law-abiding citizens.</p>
<p>I must admit, it makes for a nice distraction from not going after the people in the highest levels of government who are covering up actual crimes...</p>
<p>Because in the chaos after the shooting, we also learned that Timothy Geithner had known about the rigging of LIBOR since 2008. As the <em>Financial Times</em> reported on Tuesday, while the country was still focused on Newtown:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was warned as early as mid-2008 that banks may have been misreporting their LIBOR borrowing rate to aid their own trading positions, much earlier than previously known.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Tim Geithner, then president of the New York Fed and now US Treasury Secretary, was told by a senior colleague in a May 2008 email of her concerns about banks' deliberate misreporting.</em></p>
<p>But you don't see words like "atrocity" or "inhumane" or "heinous" used about events like these — even though they steals billions of dollars in wealth from millions of ordinary people and serve to shackle their upward mobility. Instead, they're politely labeled “deliberate misreporting.”</p>
<p>As Gerald Celente noted this week, that's bullshit: “Deliberate misreporting? How about thievery? How about high crimes? How about screwing the entire world by rigging the interest rate game?”</p>
<p>You can't see billions of dollars being systematically stolen from you in digital fashion, but you<em> can</em> see bodies on the ground...</p>
<p>What HSBC, UBS, and all the rest do to you and millions of others on a daily basis equals any shooting. Those in power know it — <span style="text-decoration: underline;">and condone it.</span></p>
<p>Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are "too hard"?</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-21T16:35:56Z2012-12-21T16:35:56Z3863Nick HodgeGraphene Uses and InvestmentsI've been tight-lipped about it for a while now, but it's finally time to show you what the BBC calls a "Miracle Material"... and why now is the time for you to buy the best way to play it.<p>I've been tight-lipped about it for a while now, but it's finally time to show you what the <em>BBC </em>calls a “Miracle Material.”</p>
<p>And why <span style="text-decoration: underline;">now</span> is the time for you to buy the best way to play it.</p>
<p>What the BBC calls a “miracle material” is actually called graphene, a name given by the two scientists who won a Nobel Prize for discovering it.</p>
<p>And it's going to change the world...</p>
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 7px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/12/13689/graphene-sidebar.jpg" border="0" alt="What is Graphene?" title="What is Graphene?" width="235" height="642" /></p>
<p>“Graphene doesn't just have one application,” says Andre Geim, who made the find along with Konstantin Novoselov. "It is not even one material. It is a huge range of materials. A good comparison would be to how plastics are used."</p>
<p>I'd say plastics is a <em>conservative </em>comparison...</p>
<p>Graphene has far more high-tech uses than plastic, and is poised to be much more lucrative.</p>
<p>Let me show you what hundreds of researchers, companies, and governments are already doing with <span style="text-decoration: underline;">the strongest, thinnest, most conductive material ever discovered.</span></p>
<p>The <em>BBC </em>says: “It could spell the end for silicon and change the future of computers and other devices forever.”</p>
<p>The <em>Daily Mail </em>says: “A graphene credit card could store as much information as today’s computers,” and that “graphene will lead to gadgets that make the iPhone and Kindle seem like toys from the age of steam trains.”</p>
<p>But it won't just revolutionize electronics. Graphene is also being used for energy, defense, and medicine applications.</p>
<p>Engineers at Northwestern University have a made a graphene electrode that allows lithium-ion batteries to store <span style="text-decoration: underline;">10 times as much power </span>and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">charge 10 times faster.</span></p>
<p>MIT Engineering Professor Jeffrey Grossman believes solar cells made from graphene could produce 10,000 times more energy from a given amount of carbon than fossil fuels.</p>
<p>And CNBC reports it could expand the current domestic oil boom because “tiny sensors coated with the wonder-material graphene and powered by flowing water could expedite the discovery of oil and natural gas reserves.”</p>
<p>It may sound too good to be true, but I assure you it isn't. I'm extremely bullish on its future prospects, and so is one of the men who discovered it, Nobel recipient Konstantin Novoselov:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I don’t think it has been over-hyped. It has attracted a lot of attention because it is so simple – it is the thinnest possible matter — and yet it has so many unique properties. There are hundreds of properties which are unique or superior to other materials. Because it is only one atom thick it is quite transparent — not many materials that can conduct electricity are transparent.</em></p>
<p>And speaking of transparent, scientists at the University of Texas, Dallas have made a graphene invisibility cloak by heating up a sheet of the material with electrical stimulation.</p>
<p>The Israeli Army is even using the material to make invisible missiles.</p>
<p>Again, this isn't science fiction; this is happening <em>right now.</em></p>
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<p>Novoselov says, “It’s a big claim, but it’s not bold. That’s exactly why there are so many researchers working on it.”</p>
<p>So many, indeed.</p>
<p>Over 200 companies are pursuing <a href="http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/graphene-miracle-material/2127">graphene opportunities</a>, and it's been the subject of thousands of peer-reviewed research papers.</p>
<p>Only a few companies around the world have access to the resource required to make graphene. And many of them are years away from production.</p>
<p>I've discovered and visited one small outfit that owns and and controls the largest and most concentrated reserves of it in the world. It's one of my top picks for 2013.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.angelnexus.com/o/web/41661" target="_blank"></a></p>
<p>Prices for this material could double this year as a shortage is expected — just like with rare earths — because of Chinese supply cuts and rapidly growing demand. And the higher they go... the higher this stock will climb.</p>
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<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-19T14:49:38Z2012-12-19T14:49:38Z2913Nick HodgePrison Stocks for a Prison StateThe existence of a two-tiered justice system couldn't be more evident than it is today. Common folk like you and me play by one set of rules... politicians and corporate insiders play by another.<p>The existence of a two-tiered justice system couldn't be more evident than it is today.</p>
<p>Common folk like you and me play by one set of rules. Politicians and corporate insiders play by another.</p>
<p>I read about a hundred-pound woman who was tased by cops in a shopping mall this week for trying to buy too many iPhones (apparently a serious crime these days). She was arrested and charged with trespassing and resiting arrest.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Arrested.</span></p>
<p>You know who <em>wasn't </em>arrested this week? Executives from HSBC who laundered money for Iran, Mexican drug cartels, and Saudi Banks with connections to Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>According to the first line of the article in the <em>New York Times:</em></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 30px;">State and federal authorities <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>decided against indicting</strong></em></span> HSBC in a money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>could jeopardize one of the world’s largest banks</strong></em></span> and ultimately destabilize the global financial system.</p>
<p>I dare you to try and aid Mexican drug cartels or Al Qaeda and see if those in power decide against indicting you. Get on the ground, you maggot. </p>
<p>This is all you really need to know about the current state of our global financial system — and the criminals who run it.</p>
<p>Not only are they too big to fail. They're...</p>
<p><strong>Too Big to Jail</strong></p>
<p>In a very real way — and perhaps for the first time openly — the government is admitting that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">it condones crime</span> when committed by big banks.</p>
<p>The government has a different view when it comes to common citizens like us...</p>
<p>I've told you about the 60-year-old who was arrested for going over three minutes of allotted speaking time at a city council meeting. I've also covered the <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/resources/police-brutality-watch">arrest and jailing</a> of the 79-year-old Korean War vet who refused to remove “junk” from his property.</p>
<p>In the eyes of your government, average citizens like this are criminals: war veterans trying to make ends meet, a grandmother speaking out about a shady waste contract.</p>
<p>These are the people who, according to the government, should be pushed to the ground, tased, arrested, and jailed.</p>
<p>Indeed, your free country has become a prison state — <span style="text-decoration: underline;">but only for ordinary people.</span></p>
<p><em>The United States imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation on earth,</em> both in total and per capita.</p>
<p>Freedom is ringing in the prison yard...</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17536/us-incarceration-rate.jpg" border="0" alt="US Incarceration Rate" title="US Incarceration Rate" /></p>
<p>As Glenn Greenwald, author of <em>With Liberty and Justice for Some,</em> pointed out this week:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 30px;">It imprisons people for longer periods of time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes the poor and racial minorities at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates.</p>
<p>He continues, quite poignantly...</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 30px;">Not everyone is subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation's most powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime, spying on Americans' communications without the warrants required by criminal law by government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses, and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.</p>
<div>
Over the past decade, your government has spent countless billions on the War on Terror. We're patted down, spied on, and tracked so much we've become immune to it — all to keep us safe from the terrorists.
</div>
<p>Our politicians now wear lapel pins to constantly remind us of the type of tragedy we're fighting against.</p>
<p><img style="float: left; margin: 10px; border: 0px none;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17532/bank-and-government-corruption.jpg" border="0" alt="Bank and Government Corruption" title="Bank and Government Corruption" /></p>
<p>America does not negotiate with terrorists, remember?</p>
<p>Unless, of course, a bank is caught red-handed laundering money for them...</p>
<p>They tell us the War on Terror and the drones and the warrantless wiretapping are to protect our freedoms.</p>
<p>We're told these things were put in place to catch the people who want to end the "American way of life."</p>
<p>And then they went ahead and destroyed it themselves. </p>
<p>Greenwald continues:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">This rationale was popularized in 1974 when Gerald Ford explained why Richard Nixon — who built his career as a "law-and-order" politician demanding harsh punishments and unforgiving prosecutions for ordinary criminals — would never see the inside of a courtroom after being caught committing multiple felonies; his pardon was for the good not of Nixon, but of all of us. That was the same reasoning hauled out to justify immunity for officials of the National Security State who tortured and telecom giants who illegally spied on Americans (we need them to keep us safe and can't disrupt them with prosecutions), as well as the refusal to prosecute any Wall Street criminals for their fraud (prosecutions for these financial crimes would disrupt our collective economic recovery).</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Needless to say, these are the kinds of crimes for which ordinary and powerless people are prosecuted and imprisoned with the greatest aggression possible. If you're Muslim and your conduct gets anywhere near helping a terrorist group, even by accident, you're going to prison for a long, long time. In fact, powerless, obscure, low-level employees are routinely sentenced to long prison terms for engaging in relatively petty money laundering schemes, unrelated to terrorism, and on a scale that is a tiny fraction of what HSBC and its senior officials are alleged to have done.</p>
<p>By its actions this week, the U.S. government has unequivocally stated that banks operate outside or above the law.</p>
<p>If you could write campaign contribution checks as big as banks, you'd be above the law, too.</p>
<p>But you can't... so you're not.</p>
<p>Let freedom ring.</p>
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<p><strong>Prison State, Prison Stocks</strong></p>
<p>And that's why the so-called freest nation on earth has 5% of the global population, but 25% of the global prison population.</p>
<p>It's why, in the last 30 years, the number of people in U.S. jails has quadrupled — from 500,000 to over 2.3 million people at a cost of $70 billion (otherwise known at 36 HSBC terrorism fines) per year.</p>
<p>And just as criminal banking has become big business, so has <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/illegal-search-and-seizure/3818">incarcerating millions of Americans</a>.</p>
<p>There are even publicly-traded companies with billion-dollar-plus market caps reaping profits from it.</p>
<p>Both the Corrections Corporation of America (NYSE: CXW) and the The GEO Group (NYSE: GEO) run prisons for profit. And both have returned more than 70% this year, while the broad market is up about 10%.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17534/prison-stocks.jpg" border="0" alt="Prison Stocks" title="Prison Stocks" /></p>
<p>That's right! In today's America, money-laundering banks that are too big too jail can make <em>above</em> average profits by investing in corporations that manage the excessive prison populations of us little people.</p>
<p>Both political parties oversee and allow it. In fact, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">they're all in on it.</span></p>
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 10px; border: 0px none;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17533/liberty-and-justice.jpeg" border="0" alt="Liberty and Justice" title="Liberty and Justice" width="300" /></p>
<p>And they have got ordinary people so caught up in taking sides — left, right, liberal, conservative, Tea Party, Occupy, Haves, Have-Nots — that the entire lot of them continue to get away with it.</p>
<p>In this most egregious HSBC example, the government is openly telling you they're letting banks get away with terrorism...</p>
<p><em>And not a peep from any Senator, Republican or Democrat, about it.</em></p>
<p>As Greenwald concludes:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">These are the same officials who previously immunized Bush-era torturers and warrantless eavesdroppers, telecom giants, and Wall Street executives, even as they continue to persecute whistleblowers at record rates and prosecute ordinary citizens — particularly poor and minorities — with extreme harshness even for trivial offenses. The [Obama] administration that now offers the excuse that HSBC is too big to prosecute is the same one that quite consciously refused to attempt to break up these banks in the aftermath of the "too-big-to-fail" crisis of 2008.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Having different "justice systems" for citizens based on their status, wealth, power and prestige is exactly what the US founders argued most strenuously had to be avoided (even as they themselves maintained exactly such a system). But here we have in undeniable clarity not merely proof of exactly how this system functions, but also the rotted and fundamentally corrupt precept on which it's based: that some actors are simply too important and too powerful to punish criminally. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz warned in 2010, exempting the largest banks from criminal prosecution has meant that lawlessness and "venality" is now "at a higher level" in the US even than that which prevailed in the pervasively corrupt and lawless privatizing era in Russia.</p>
<p>And if they're allowed to launder money for terrorists and drug cartels...</p>
<p><em>What in the hell do you think they're doing to the "free market"?</em></p>
<p>You should be fired up about this. It should make you angry. And it should drive your quest for total independence from the system even harder.</p>
<p>Find people who share your view and stick together. </p>
<p>Because "Liberty and Justice for All" now comes with fine print.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-14T17:02:09Z2012-12-14T17:02:09Z3842Nick HodgeShould We Export Natural Gas? I think the real natural gas "milestone" in 2013 will be what the U.S. collectively decides to do with its newfound gas wealth.<p>So the U.S. has a 100-year supply of natural gas...</p>
<p>Now what?</p>
<p>Well, now come the important decisions.</p>
<p>I got a message over Thanksgiving break from a journalist at a national magazine. She was doing a story about transformative events in 2013, and wanted my input on natural gas. The message said:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>One thing my editor wants me to check out is natural gas... will the U.S. pass any major milestone when it comes to natural gas? She has something written down about the U.S. passing Russia as the largest producer, but from what I'm seeing online it doesn't look like that will happen until 2015.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>So... I'm just wondering if you could tell me if natural gas is a big blip on the radar in 2013 or not. If it is, why?</em></p>
<p>I replied with a 500-word write-up of what's important for natural gas next year. I'd like to share a modified version of it with you today...</p>
<p><strong>Natural Gas in 2013</strong></p>
<p>Natural gas is a huge deal this year — and will continue to be next year because of advances in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that are allowing us to unlock reserves once thought off-limits.</p>
<p>As for outpacing Russia, we've actually gone back and forth over the past few years.</p>
<p>According to the Energy Information Administration: In 2011 Russia was the world's largest dry natural gas producer (23.6 Tcf), regaining its status as the world top producer after trailing U.S. production in 2009 and 2010.</p>
<p>This year is still up in the air, but I'd venture a guess that we come out on top.</p>
<p>However, this isn't really a "milestone." It's fun to make ranking lists, but that really gives no insight.</p>
<p>Russia has way more reserves than we do (about 6x as many).</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17488/largest-natural-gas-reserves-by-country.jpg" border="0" alt="Largest Natural Gas Reserves by Country" title="Largest Natural Gas Reserves by Country" /></p>
<p>And they also waste a lot more by flaring it off during <a href="http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/us-oil-production/2865">oil production</a>. They have so much, they literally burn it off as waste.</p>
<p>They waste more gas in this fashion than any other country by far:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17489/largest-natural-gas-flarers-by-country.jpg" border="0" alt="Largest Natural Gas Flarers by Country" title="Largest Natural Gas Flarers by Country" /></p>
<p>We could go back and forth for years as the world's top "producer," but ultimately Russia has a lot more — and will start producing more once they gain more knowledge on fracking.</p>
<p>I think the real natural gas "milestone" in 2013 will be what the U.S. collectively decides to do with its newfound gas wealth.</p>
<p>Some say we should export it, and several companies (see them all <a href="http://www.ferc.gov/industries/gas/indus-act/lng.asp" target="_blank">here</a>) have already asked the government for permission to do so. The answers to these requests will be pivotal for the entire country because it presents a crossroads...</p>
<p>Do we hoard our gas to benefit all U.S. citizens by not having to import any and allowing prices to remain near decade lows (I'm expecting a $3-$5/mmBtu range for a few years)?</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17491/natural-gas-prices-winter-2012.png" border="0" alt="Natural Gas Prices Winter 2012" title="Natural Gas Prices Winter 2012" /></p>
<p>Or do we do the pure capitalism thing and send it wherever it fetches the highest price, i.e. Asia?</p>
<p>The answers to these questions are the real story of 2013.</p>
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<p>From my view, it seems silly to have sought energy independence for so long... to be right on the verge of it... and to squander it away so a few companies can sell gas at higher Asian prices.</p>
<p>I'd like to keep all that gas here: let the price stay low, which will benefit small businesses in the form of low energy/utility costs.</p>
<p>Ask yourself this: <span style="text-decoration: underline;">We've imported $100 oil for years... Why should we export $3.00 natural gas?</span></p>
<p>With prices that low, you'll see more cars (especially big rigs, fleets, and buses) in the U.S. start running on natural gas.</p>
<p>Natural gas prices between $2.00 and $4.00 translates into $0.25 to $0.50 per gallon of gasoline equivalent (GGE). Even with $1.75 refining cost, that still translates to $2.00 to $2.25 for a gallon.<img style="float: right; margin: 10px; border: 0px none;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17492/natural-gas-delivery-truck.jpg" border="0" alt="Natural Gas Delivery Truck" title="Natural Gas Delivery Truck" width="325" /> I've been paying more than that for over five years.</p>
<p>That's why more than 50% of the trash trucks sold this year will be powered by natural gas. I saw that the new Dodge Ram is offered in a natural gas version as well.</p>
<p>It makes perfect sense for anyone with a fleet: utilities, postal services, or businesses that have delivery vehicles. Because the cost-per-gallon equivalent is much cheaper and it's a domestic energy source.</p>
<p>Across the U.S., companies are racing to create the infrastructure necessary to start relying more heavily on natural gas for many needs: rigs, gas-to-liquid plants, pumping stations, pipelines, engines, and more.</p>
<p>It's creating a ring of wealth from coast to coast.</p>
<p>Clean Energy Fuels (NASDAQ: CLNE) is building “America's Natural Gas Highway” — 150 LNG fueling stations in two years. Shell (NYSE: RDS) is building an additional 100.</p>
<p>It's time to start preparing to profit from this transition now.</p>
<p><div id="bottomsignupbox" style="text-align: center;">
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<p>If we play it right, we'll be using cheap natural gas to power the country <em>and </em>our portfolios.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-12T14:50:58Z2012-12-12T14:50:58Z2890Nick HodgeInvesting in Lithium BatteriesThe lithium battery market is expected to grow almost 300% by 2020, from $11 billion in annual sales to $43 billion.<p>The only word to describe the battery market over the past year is <span style="text-decoration: underline;">mixed.</span></p>
<p>A look at a chart of the most recognizable names in the biz — China BAK, Exide, Johnson Controls, Maxwell Technologies, etc. — illustrates this perfectly:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17476/battery-stocks-2012.jpg" border="0" alt="Battery Stocks 2012" title="Battery Stocks 2012" /></p>
<p>Stocks in the battery sector turned in performances ranging from negative 60% to up 40%.</p>
<p>Indeed, the NASDAQ OMX Energy Storage Index (NASDAQ: ^GRNSTOR) is down 11% for the year, which perfectly reflects the middle ground between the extremes.</p>
<p>And the main topic of battery conversation this year wasn't a positive one...</p>
<p>A123 Systems, which was awarded a $249 million grant as part of the stimulus, was forced into bankruptcy. Instead of being the jolt to the industry many thought it would be, it ended up being the Solyndra of the sector.</p>
<p>The excitement around this MIT spin-off was fervent when it launched in late 2009 with a share price over $25.00... Today it trades for $0.02.</p>
<p>The same thing happened to battery maker Ener1. It had approval for $118.5 million in government grants. It received only half of them before it filed for bankruptcy and was delisted from the stock exchange.</p>
<p>But these negatives are only part of the story...</p>
<p>Like is happening in solar, the growth of any industry means some competitors will fail.</p>
<p>Across the cleantech space, international conglomerates are merging and acquiring their way into the space. And as I see it, that means two things...</p>
<p><strong>#1 Commoditization</strong></p>
<p>It's a long word, but a simple concept.</p>
<p>In the early days of any industry, there are many competitors. And it's human nature to try to pick who the winner will be. But as the industry matures, products become more and more similar until there are few discernible differences — that is, the product becomes a commodity.</p>
<p>In many cases, it's not the product's but the <em>manufacturer's </em>ability to cut costs and increase profits that determines who the winner will be.</p>
<p>Computers and televisions are the prime examples of this phenomenon: The product becoming a commodity is why Chinese-owned Lenovo now makes ThinkPads instead of IBM. It's the same reason South Korea's LG now owns Zenith, which pioneered remote controls and HDTV.</p>
<p>Now the same thing is happening in batteries. A123 may now be bankrupt, but it's not because the <a href="http://www.energyandcapital.com/resources/energy-storage-companies" target="_blank">lithium battery market</a> is slowing down...</p>
<p>Instead, it's because it had to recall defective batteries made for Fisker and could not generate sufficient profits to pay off debts.</p>
<p>The lithium battery market is expected to grow almost 300% by 2020, from $11 billion in annual sales to $43 billion.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17477/global-lithium-battery-market-growth-forecast.jpg" border="0" alt="Global Lithium Battery Market Growth Forecast" title="Global Lithium Battery Market Growth Forecast" />And has this happens, the selling price is falling. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">And that's what is hurting companies. </span></p>
<p>Selling prices for lithium ion batteries today are in the $500-$600 per kilowatt-hour range. That's expected to fall to $200 per kilowatt-hour in the next eight years.</p>
<p>Those who can't stay profitable as prices fall will fail. This is what happened to Solyndra in the solar industry, and what just happened to A123.</p>
<p>Like happened with IBM's ThinkPad, A123 batteries will carry on under a new Chinese name...</p>
<p>Though Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI) bid to acquire its assets, Chinese firm Wanxiang ultimately bought them for $256.6 million.</p>
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<p><strong>#2 The Resource</strong></p>
<p>While the battery manufacturing sector as a whole was down 11% in 2012, the same isn't true for the miners and processors of the materials necessary to make lithium batteries.</p>
<p>Two of the three top holdings in the Global X Lithium (NYSE: LIT) ETF — FMC Corp. (NYSE: FMC) and Rockwood Holdings (NYSE: ROC) — are each up more than 20% on the year.<img style="float: right; margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/50/17478/end-uses-for-lithium.gif" border="0" alt="End Uses for Lithium" title="End Uses for Lithium" /></p>
<p>Currently only about 23% of produced lithium goes to making batteries. With the lithium battery market slated to grow at over 18% annually, it could put a strain on lithium supply and send prices higher.</p>
<p>In the last two years alone, lithium demand has grown 25%. It's expected to double by 2020.</p>
<p>And lithium prices are rising, too. Lithium carbonate hovered around $2,000 per tonne from 2000 to 2004, but then started rising with demand. By 2009 they were at $5,000 per tonne — and are expected to hit $6,000 per tonne this year.</p>
<p>These companies are increasingly signing lithium offtake agreements directly with major international conglomerates.</p>
<p>Canada Lithium (TSX: CLQ), for example, has signed a five-year lithium supply agreement with Tianjin Products and Energy Resources Development Co. for 12,000 tonnes per year.</p>
<p>Toyota has gone right to the source as well, partnering up with Orocrobre (TSX: ORL) to build the first large-scale brine-based lithium project in 20 years. It's expected to produce 17,500 tonnes per year.</p>
<p>As the lithium battery market continues to mature — which will include continued consolidation — it seems the smartest way to play it is through the international manufacturers and miners with access to the best resources, rather than take on unnecessary risk betting on unproven entrants.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-11T17:32:44Z2012-12-11T17:32:44Z2885Nick HodgeGlobal Economic CollapseThey continue to stoke your fears of isolated events - Iran, North Korea, Israel, West Nile, Zombie Apocalypse - while the most damaging events continue to take place right under your nose.<p>What's your worst fear?</p>
<p>Mine would have to be losing everything I've worked so hard for, both tangible and intangible.</p>
<p>I know this fear is more widespread now than it has been in a long time.</p>
<p>The housing and market collapses of 2006 and 2008 only made this fear more acute. Those who weren't wiped out have been waiting for something even worse ever since, myself included.</p>
<p>While major market indexes are back to — or even higher than — their 2008 levels, it hasn't felt like much of a recovery. You would've had to nail the bottom just to recoup your losses.</p>
<p>I believe your fear of losing everything is justified.</p>
<p>But it's not going to be a single, isolated event that does it. It's going to be a slow, systematic dismantling of your liberty, sovereignty, and wealth.</p>
<p>You have reason to be concerned. And reason to prepare. Because it's already happening... Those in power know it — and are, at worst, actively encouraging it. At best, they are complacent.</p>
<p>What's worse, they continue to stoke your fears of isolated events — Iran, North Korea, Israel, West Nile, Zombie Apocalypse — while the most damaging events continue to take place right under your nose.</p>
<p>Great injustices are occurring and will continue. And some of the offered solutions will only make them worse — intentionally or unintentionally.</p>
<p>Identifying and counteracting them is vital to your continued well-being.</p>
<p><strong>On and On</strong></p>
<p>The problems that caused the original crisis a few years ago are still rampant. And with no real way to combat them, global governments have done what any family would do: They're protecting their own.</p>
<p>Above all, that means politicians and bankers... but many executives and companies are in the inner circle.</p>
<p>For starters, that's why instead of bailing out the middle class, trillions have been spent bailing out banks and corporations. Have you seen any benefits from that?</p>
<p>That's only one way they've protected their own while leaving you vulnerable.</p>
<p>You see, these men see the writing on the wall. They drew up the plans for it, after all. And now that it's run out of control, they've gone into protective mode, caring only about themselves at all costs.</p>
<p>This is why Jon Corzine stole clients' money. This is why Zuckerberg and his banking underwriters took the money and ran from the Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) IPO (now down a third), leaving the common folks holding the bag as always. It's why HSBC laundered money for drug cartels, terrorists, and rogue states. It's why Barclays, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citibank, and Deutsche Bank conspired to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), controlling the “free market” of $360 trillion worth of loans and financial contracts worldwide.</p>
<p>These things erode your way of life, your purchasing power, and your ability to succeed financially.</p>
<p>Not only are they aware of this... It's their goal. They see you and me as their meal ticket.</p>
<p>They make their billions and million-dollar bonuses by pushing bad loans on you, charging crazy fees, inventing products you can't understand or benefit from (derivatives, credit default swaps, flash trading), or outright stealing.</p>
<p>And the people sworn to protect you — you know them as <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/more-gold/3811" target="_blank">Congress</a> — are either in on the ruse, or on the payroll. But instead of envelopes of cash, we call it "campaign finance" or "lobbying."</p>
<p>Seriously, have you seen your leaders take any steps to do something for you?</p>
<p>Not at all...</p>
<p>But they'll talk at length about Israel or Ahmadinejad or the fiscal cliff or the Royal pregnancy... or anything at all to keep you distracted from having your future pulled out from under you.</p>
<p>If banks were taken off the Fed IV, they'd die. Single family loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration that are more than 90 days past due number close to 800,000, as the government started to insure the bad loans once reserved only for our finest bankers.</p>
<p>We produce nothing but fake money — now over $2 billion per day! — which makes all your dollars worth less.</p>
<p>This year we'll see the lowest cyclical peak in gross domestic product (GDP) since the 1970s...</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/49/17427/us-gdp-since-1800s.jpg" border="0" alt="U.S. GDP since 1800s" title="U.S. GDP since 1800s" width="600" /></p>
<p>The ten largest debtor nations on earth have total debts more than 300% higher than world GDP. That $70 trillion in debt is the collateral for $700 trillion in global derivatives — or 1,200% of global GDP.</p>
<p>That'd be like if you were $100,000 in debt and asked the local bank to front you $1.2 million to leverage up.</p>
<p>Once the first debtor default domino falls (Greece? Spain? Italy?), the rest will soon follow. Then the banks are done (where's your money?), which means the <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/resources/surviving-the-coming-economic-collapse">collapse of finance</a> (if we can still call it that)...</p>
<p>Bonds evaporate. World trade, energy prices, and agriculture collapse next. And...</p>
<p>Well, I think you get the idea.</p>
<p>You could, in all reality, wake up one morning to have your greatest fear realized: Everything you've worked so hard for... gone.</p>
<p>Again, that's why those who know it's coming are getting (stealing?) all they can now.</p>
<p>And it's also why they've been conditioning you to be a sheep, so the revolt will be easier to control.</p>
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<p>The U.S. military is the world's largest buyer of fuel, consuming 8 billion gallons a year.</p>
<p>The Air Force alone spends roughly $10 BILLION on jet fuel PER YEAR.</p>
<p>That's why the Air Force is betting on a revolutionary kind of fuel to change that...</p>
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<p>They're conditioning you to:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Be poked and prodded at will (see: TSA, warrantless DNA collection, radio frequency tracking of students)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Be subjected to routine invasions of privacy (NSA agents have said "everyone in the U.S. is under virtual surveillance" — there are cameras at every intersection and toll booth, and domestic drones have been approved are are being used)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Accept harsh punishments for violating trivial rules while facing none themselves (man jailed for junk in his yard; parent fined for toddler peeing on their property; shutting down of lemonade stands; <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/illegal-vegetable-gardens/3769">fines for having your own garden</a>)</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>And they're making a bold attempt to paint anyone who points this out as “crazy,” or “on the fringe”...</p>
<p>Homeland Security has advised liberty lovers and gun rights advocates be labeled as "domestic terrorists."</p>
<p>Both parties conspired to keep libertarians (remember how Ron Paul was treated at the convention?) in the margin this election.</p>
<p>The dots are out there. More and more people are connecting them. And the emerging picture doesn't look too good.</p>
<p>Take time to really identify what's important to you, and start taking the steps to secure it now.</p>
<p>Remember, if you're not holding it in your hand... it's not really yours.</p>
<p>Precious metals, guns, land, food, and self-reliance are the world's real currency. It's no coincidence these items are the ones those in control want you to have the least of. </p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-07T14:14:05Z2012-12-07T14:14:05Z3826Nick HodgeU.S. to Rival Saudi Oil ProductionTell me... as an investor, do you make more money if you know how big something is going to be... or if you're told how big something is?<p>Yesterday before the market opened, I was checking headlines as I do every morning.</p>
<p>If I didn't know any better, I would've thought the United States found an ocean of oil overnight...</p>
<p>The headlines about U.S. energy were full of words like “independence,” “surge,” “revolution,” and “boom.”</p>
<p>Italian newspaper <em>Milano Finanza</em> ran a cover with the title, “I Padroni dell'ENERGIA,” which roughly translates to: “The Masters of Energy.” It depicted Obama as an oil sheik.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/49/17377/obama-as-oil-sheik.jpg" border="0" alt="Obama as Oil Sheik" title="Obama as Oil Sheik" /></p>
<p>The subhead read: “L'America supererà l'Arabia come primo produttore.” In English: "America will exceed Saudi Arabia as the prime producer."</p>
<p>But the Italian rag wasn't the first to allude that Americans were about to become the masters of energy....</p>
<p>Morgan Stanley analyst Evan Calio titled a recent note to clients: “Saudi America.”</p>
<p>Then University of Michigan economist Mark J. Perry took to Twitter to describe American oil production in the same exact way:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/49/17378/mark-perry-twitter-saudi-america.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Perry Twitter " title="Mark Perry Twitter " /></p>
<p>And it didn't stop there. Continental Resources (NYSE: CLR) was out with a statement saying the Bakken actually holds the equivalent of 903 billion barrels of oil — 57% higher than its 2010 estimate of 577 billion barrels.</p>
<p>And <em>Business Insider</em> posted a story claiming “The Most Profitable Oil Field In The World Is Right Here In America.” It cited an EP Energy — a spin-off of El Paso Pipeline (NYSE: EPB) — report showing that the Eagle Ford was the “highest return/value asset in the portfolio.”</p>
<p><div class="article_textad"><div style="border-bottom:1px solid gray; text-align:center; color:gray; font-size:10px; width:100%;">Advertisement</div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Discovery Alert: The Land of Milk and... Oil?</strong></p>
<p>For years, most people paid little attention to Glassrock County out in West Texas.</p>
<p>But I can tell you this... that's not the case any longer.</p>
<p>You see, the land underneath this little-known county contains an <em>oil field that is bigger than 8 U.S. states combined.</em></p>
<p>And according to CNBC, the <strong>"Oil flows like water..."</strong></p>
<p>As you can imagine, this is paving the way to even more incredible oil stock gains than we saw with either the Bakken or Eagle Ford (which both created their share of millionaires).</p>
<p>The question here isn't when you should move on this opportunity, but HOW FAST you can move on it... because I can tell you, plenty of folks already have.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.angelnexus.com/ta/?loc=web&adid=1814">Here's how you can ride the newest oil tsunami to explosive profits...<span></span></a></p><hr size="1" /></div></p>
<p><strong>That's When It Hit Me</strong></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">We've been right all along. </span></p>
<p>You see, all the things I just mentioned are reporting and commenting on what has <em>already</em> happened.</p>
<p><em>You can't profit from what has already happened.</em></p>
<p>We tell you what's going to happen years in advance... giving you plenty of time and opportunities to profit along the way.</p>
<p>That's what Keith did all the way back in 2007, when he told you:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">If the North Dakota and USGS reports proved anything, it's that we can expect a huge amount of investment. Believe me, this play isn't going to fade out. Lynn Helms, the director of North Dakota's department of mineral resources, put it best, "It's going to be slow, sustained oil production that can last a century or more." In other words, the Bakken play is just beginning.</p>
<p>Tell me... as an investor, do you make more money if you know how big something is going to be... or if you're told how big something is?</p>
<p>Same goes for the Eagle Ford Shale. When Joseph Weisenthal, Deputy Editor of <em>Business Insider</em>, broke the news that Eagle Ford was the most profitable oil field in the world, he readily admitted that “he had no idea.”</p>
<p>How could he? Again, he's reporting on what's <em>already </em>happened. <em>Business Insider</em> hasn't covered energy every day for the past six years like we have. Like most traditional media outlets, they instead report on the “best of” and “most popular” of what's happening or already happened.</p>
<p>We tell you what's going to happen.</p>
<p>They tell you when it does.</p>
<p>We did have an idea the Eagle Ford would become a tour de force in the domestic energy game. In early 2009 we told you:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">While production in the Federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico fell sharply (roughly 14.8% in 2008) due to the hurricane season, production in unconventional fields grew nearly 10%. Unlike U.S. oil production, which peaked almost four decades ago, developing some of those shale plays has just begun.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">One of the up-and-coming shale plays you're bound to hear more about in the future is the Eagle Ford Shale. Located in south Texas, the Eagle Ford Shale formation is found directly beneath the Austin Chalk Shale at depths between 4,000 and 10,000 feet.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Out of the few companies operating in the Eagle Ford Shale, one worth paying closer attention to is Petrohawk Energy. During the first quarter, Petrohawk drilled and completed two wells. And based off their results so far, they've suggested the Eagle Ford Shale is one of the highest quality shale reservoirs in the U.S.</p>
<p>Shares of Petrohawk traded for $25 that day.</p>
<p>Because the Eagle Ford was so profitable — who could've known? — BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) bought Petrohawk two years later for $38.75 per share... and our readers made a hefty 67%.</p>
<p>So as you continue to see stories like those I've just mentioned, and as you continue to see charts like this...</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/49/17380/non-opec-oil-production-growth.jpg" border="0" alt="Non-OPEC Oil Production Growth" title="Non-OPEC Oil Production Growth" /></p>
<p>and this...<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/49/17381/us-oil-imports-as-share-of-consumption.jpg" border="0" alt="U.S. Oil Imports as Share of Consumption" title="U.S. Oil Imports as Share of Consumption" /></p>
<p>Know that they're telling and showing you what has already happened.</p>
<p>To American mainstream media, I say this: <em>Really?! There's an oil and gas boom in America! Fracking ushered it in an is bringing jobs with it? Tell me something this newsletter hasn't covered exhaustively for over half a decade.</em></p>
<p>And to you, I'd say: <em>Ditch the mainstream commentary unless you only want hindsight. If you want to know what <span style="text-decoration: underline;">will</span> happen, stick with alternative outlets like us. </em></p>
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<p>Or you can read about it in five years somewhere else.</p>
<p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickchodge" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/50/11971/follow-basic.jpg" border="0" alt="follow basic" />@nickchodge on Twitter</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><em> Nick is the Founder and President of the <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/">Outsider Club</a>, and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Early Advantage. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's <a href="http://www.outsiderclub.com/editors/nick-hodge">page</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><em>*Follow Outsider Club on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jointheoutsiderclub">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/OutsiderClub">Twitter</a>. </em></p></p>2012-12-05T17:11:46Z2012-12-05T17:11:46Z2865Nick HodgeInvesting in HousingIt might be too late to get on the housing stock run, but it's the perfect time to get in on housing itself.<p>It ain't all bad...</p>
<p>If you've read anything I've written lately, you know there are many things going on in this world that I'm unhappy with. And judging by your responses, many of you agree.</p>
<p>But frustration doesn't get you anywhere.</p>
<p>In fact, that's the very definition of the word:</p>
<h3 style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="padding-bottom: 14px; padding-right: 15px;"><em>frus·trate</em></span><span style="font-family: 'Doulos SIL','Gentum','TITUS Cyberbit Basic','Junicode','Aborigonal Serif','Arial Unicode MS','Lucida Sans Unicode','Chrysanthi Unicode'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; padding-bottom: 7px;">/ˈfrəstrāt/:</span><strong> 1. To cause to have no effect; 2. to prevent from achieving a goal or gratifying a desire.</strong></span></h3>
<p>It's helpful to be mindful of all the bad out there — but you'll miss many opportunities if that's all you pay attention to.</p>
<p>For example, if all you do is own gold, you're flat for the past year.</p>
<p>An investment in Ford (which I recommended months ago to my <em>Early Advantage</em> readers) would have you UP 14% in the same time:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px none;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/48/17328/gold-vs-ford-2012.jpg" border="0" alt="Gold vs. Ford 2012" title="Gold vs. Ford 2012" width="600" /></p>
<p>Of course, you would have had to recognize and accept that the U.S. auto sector wasn't all doom and gloom. Sadly, many people couldn't escape their internal negativity to do so.</p>
<p>Right now, the same thing is happening in housing: Prices have risen for months on end.</p>
<p>Yet I still hear tons of people refusing to accept facts.</p>
<p><strong>Contributor to Growth</strong></p>
<p>For two months I've been telling you to <a href="http://www.angelnexus.com/o/web/40951" target="_blank">buy a house</a> either to live in, rent, or resell.</p>
<p>As usual, I was months ahead of the mainstream. In my <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/2013-market-outlook/3717">2013 Market Outlook</a> last month, I told you the automotive and housing sectors would continue their strong showings, thanks to continued low interest rates.</p>
<p>I'm already being proven correct. Here's what <em>USA Today</em> had to say about housing this week:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Six years since the start of the greatest housing collapse since the Great Depression, one doesn't have to look very far to see signs of a recovery. Nationally, home prices are rising after more than a 30% drop since mid-2006.</p>
<p>Foreclosures have slowed in most of the country after having decimated hundreds of U.S. cities. Rather than being a drag on the U.S. economy, housing is now seen as a contributor to growth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On Tuesday, the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index reported third quarter prices were up 3.6% from a year ago, and September's 20-City Index reached its highest level in two years.</p>
<p>There's still a long way to go — <em>which makes now a great time to buy</em> — but the data at this point is undeniable:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><em>Zillow.com</em> data shows 183 of 252 (73%) of markets nationwide bottomed in the third quarter.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Existing home sales were up 11% this October from last October.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>17 of the 20 cities in Case-Shiller's Index are up annually.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The National Association of Realtors says the supply of homes for sale has fallen to its lowest level in a decade.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Robert Shiller, who lends his name to the closely-watched index, has pegged now as the time to buy, saying: “It's very affordable.”</p>
<p><div class="article_textad"><div style="border-bottom:1px solid gray; text-align:center; color:gray; font-size:10px; width:100%;">Advertisement</div><br /><p align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in;"><strong>Exposed: Mainstream medicine's deadliest conspiracy?</strong></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0.14in;">Can you believe this video? It's a phenomenon. In fact, it was sent to more than 289,000 people in just 24 hours!</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0.14in;">But you might not see it at all.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0.14in;">Why? Because, for the first time, mainstream medicine's deadliest conspiracy has been EXPOSED. Finally, this video is the 'shot heard around the world' the establishment prayed would never come.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0.14in;">To be honest, I'm not sure how long this video will be available. There are powerful interests hell-bent on minimizing the damage it is doing to corporate medicine's profit machine.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0.14in;">Before it's banned, <a href="http://hsionlineorders.net/video/ACS_LP_pic_OLP/?pco=LHSIN801&efo=HSIOP111027">watch it here.</a></p><hr size="1" /></div></p>
<p><strong>Housing's Affordable, Stocks Aren't</strong></p>
<p>Indeed, it's affordable in more ways than one. And with much upside to come, I think buying housing and land is one of the best investments you can make right now.</p>
<p>For starters, interest rates for 30-year mortgages are at record lows — touching 3.31% last week.</p>
<p>As the housing market collapsed in 2006, Americans were spending 24% of their gross monthly income on mortgages. Today that's down to 13%.</p>
<p>The combination of affordability and rising prices has created what Schwab Chief Investment Strategist Liz Ann Sonders calls an “inflection point,” where the market stops going down and starts going up.</p>
<p>Major homebuilders are echoing that sentiment, with Toll Bros. (NYSE: TOL) CFO Martin Conner saying, “Consumers now recognize that houses are not going to get cheaper tomorrow.”</p>
<p>As has become standard these days, the fast-paced algorithms are already buying up this turnaround. Lennar (NYSE: LEN), PulteGroup (NYSE: PHM), KB Home (NYSE: KB), and Hovnanian (NYSE: HOV) have risen as much as 300% in the past year.</p>
<p>Here's what those charts look like next to the yellow metal everyone has been clamoring about:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px none;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/48/17329/housing-vs-gold-2012.jpg" border="0" alt="Housing vs. Gold 2012" title="Housing vs. Gold 2012" width="600" /></p>
<p>You could've made triple your money accepting the consequences of Bernanke's printing instead of protecting yourself from it.</p>
<p>And while it might be too late to get in on the housing stock run, it's the perfect time to <a href="http://www.angelnexus.com/o/web/40951">get in on housing</a> itself.</p>
<p>According to data from Moody's, Equifax, the National Association of Realtors, and the Census, median home prices are expected to rise 15% in the next three years, from $178,000 to $205,000:</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2012/48/17330/housing-price-forecast.jpg" border="0" alt="Housing Price Forecast" title="Housing Price Forecast" /></p>
<p>A 15% gain is good. But that still requires you to shell out $100,000 or more to buy a house. Not everyone has — or is prepared to spend — that much money for an investment.</p>
<p>Seeing this turnaround coming, I found a way to <a href="http://www.angelnexus.com/o/web/40951" target="_blank">buy homes for as little as $1,000</a> using a special government program.</p>
<p>At that price, you have tens of thousands of dollars (or more) in your pocket the minute you buy the house. Then you can rent it for continuous income, or sell it to pocket the difference.</p>
<p>I've already shown hundreds of people how to do this.</p>
<p><em>Why shouldn't you be next?</em></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call it like you see it,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><img style="margin: 10px;" src="https://images.angelpub.com/2011/25/9071/nick-hodge-signature.gif" border="0" alt="Nick Hodge Signature" /></p>
<p>Nick Hodge<br />for <a href="http://www.wealthdaily.com"><em>Wealth Daily</em></a></p>2012-11-30T16:47:43Z2012-11-30T16:47:43Z3807Nick Hodge