“Sir Render”

Sound Advice (Insanely Profitable Wisdom)

“Sell half, and let the rest ride.”

For many of the Paradigm Press editors, this is time-honored wisdom — routinely passed along to readers whenever the editors have guided readers to a huge gain.

The idea is that if you have a massive profit on paper, and the investment thesis behind the recommendation is still sound… it’s best to turn that paper profit into cash by selling half your position.

The rest can stay invested to benefit from any future gains. If circumstances change and those gains don’t materialize… your overall investment is still comfortably in the black because you’ve been, as the gambling analogy goes, “playing with house money.”

Of course, the idea is to pocket additional gains in the future on top of the ones you’ve already booked.

Which brings us back to a topic we broached two weeks ago — the massive run-up in a crypto called Render.

Readers of James Altucher’s Early Stage Crypto Investor got into Render in early 2022. Unlike many cryptos, RNDR isn’t some fly-by-night, pie-in-the-sky proposition. Using a proprietary crypto token, it solves a real-world problem — the shortage of computer processing power needed for the very power-hungry application of generating 3D computer images, such as a Pixar movie.

Instead of relying on costly and slow service from giant centralized outfits like Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure… 3D graphics builders could use Render Network to “borrow” the computers of anyone who was willing to lend them to Render in exchange for payment. This decentralized model slashed both costs and wait times for the graphics builders by 70–90%.

Even Pixar became a Render customer — as did Apple and Google. And now that AI is all the rage… well, AI needs the same sort of processing power that high-end animated graphics require. Another tailwind for RNDR.

Long story short… last month, James and his team urged readers to sell half their position in RNDR for a gain of 1,695%.

That was on Feb. 23, when RNDR was $7.61. A few days later, RNDR took off like a rocket ship — from a little under $7 to over $12.

Checking our screens today, it’s at $11.24 — another 47.7% gain in just three weeks.

That’s the wisdom of selling half and letting the rest ride.

But please don’t kick yourself if you missed out on RNDR. There’s more where that came from — and sooner than you might think.

Recall that James has made numerous accurate crypto calls over the years — going back to 2013, when he talked up Bitcoin at $114. (It’s over $70,000 now.)

More recently, he recommended a crypto called Solana to his readers at $11. Less than a year later, it soared as high as $260. He also personally invested in Filecoin when it was trading for less than $1 in 2017. It reached a record high of $237 in 2021.

Right now, James says a handful of coins are set to soar — thanks to a “trigger event” that takes place less than 24 hours from now.

One of them could be a hundred-bagger — delivering 100X gains — by 2030. And James names it free in this presentation.

For best results, you want to act before 8:55:35 a.m. EST tomorrow. Why the urgency? James explains right here.

Persistent Inflation? Say It Ain’t So!

“The reality is that rate cuts are simply not in the cards until September at the earliest,” Paradigm’s macro maven Jim Rickards told his Situation Report readers yesterday.

And that was before the latest official inflation numbers came out this morning, which are — wait for it — “hotter than expected.”

The consumer price index jumped 0.4% from January to February — with shelter and gasoline accounting for more than half of that increase.

The year-over-year inflation rate ticked up to 3.2% — in contrast with the expectation among Wall Street economists that it would stay steady at 3.1%.

“The path to slow price hikes remains bumpy,” says CNN, exhibiting a keen grasp of the obvious.

Here, on the other hand, we’ve been telling you since last summer about research demonstrating that once inflation sails past 5%, it can take a decade or longer to get it back to 2% — which is the Federal Reserve’s inflation target.

Sure enough, inflation peaked at 9.1% in the mid-2022 — and while it’s climbed down, it’s been stuck at 3.0% or higher since last summer.

For a couple of months now, Wall Street and the financial media have been jabbering about “the last mile” of getting inflation back to 2% — in hopes that with 2% inflation in sight, the Fed would “pivot” to interest rate cuts.

But the last mile is looking more like a grueling marathon. And the Fed pivot is looking more and more distant.

That said, Wall Street is taking the inflation figures in stride.

The S&P 500 is up nearly 1% on the day to 5,166. If that holds at day’s end, it’ll be a record close. The Nasdaq is up even stronger, the Dow somewhat weaker.

Crude is up modestly, about a half percent to $78.36.

Bitcoin pulled back below $72,000 overnight — but it’s knocking on the door again at $71,985.

The labor shortage is finally starting to ease for small businesses.

That’s the takeaway from the monthly small-business optimism index — out this morning from the National Federation of Independent Business.

Each month, survey respondents are asked to identify their single-most important problem. For the last couple of years, two issues have jockeyed for first place — inflation and finding qualified help.

But in the February survey, inflation is clearly out in front — identified by 23% of respondents, up from 20% in January. Meanwhile, “quality of labor” was identified by 16% — down from 21% the month before, and in fact the lowest since the early days of lockdown in April 2020.

Other issues pinpointed by survey respondents include labor costs, taxes and regulations — all in the low double digits.

The overall optimism number for February registers a “meh” 89.4. This figure has been mired below its long-term average since the summer of 2021. And we do mean long-term — the NFIB began conducting this survey in 1973.

The Real Drivers Behind Gold’s Rally (Sorry, WSJ)

Not surprisingly, gold took a slight tumble this morning after the inflation numbers.

At last check, the bid is down $21 to $2,160. If interest rates stand to be “higher for longer,” then all else being equal, gold looks less attractive because it doesn’t have a yield.

But frankly, if it weren’t the inflation numbers dragging down gold at the moment, it would be something else. Gold is significantly overbought. Silver and the mining stocks continue to languish — and you need both of them to confirm a healthy bull market in gold. (Silver still can’t break above $25 and indeed it’s down this morning to $24.10.)

On the other hand… gold has held the line on $2,000 since last Thanksgiving and on $2,100 so far through March. Even in the face of a pullback like today’s, that’s unmistakably long-term bullish.

The front page of today’s Wall Street Journal tries to tease out the reasons gold has been so resilient of late. It settled on “a sense of growing economic and geopolitical risks outside the U.S.”

Lame. Yesterday, Jim Rickards laid out some of the real reasons to his Strategic Intelligence readers.

“Central banks have been net buyers of gold since 2010 after being net sellers from 1970 to 2009. Mining output has been flat for the past eight years; it’s not shrinking but it’s not expanding either. That combination of strong demand from central banks and flat output from mining is a recipe for higher prices and a de facto floor.”

At the same time, “the most powerful driver is the one getting the least attention,” Jim says — because it doesn’t serve the narratives of Washington or the corporate media. He said as much on X-formerly-Twitter a few days ago.

“At the start of the war in Ukraine,” he reminds us, “the U.S. froze about $300 billion of U.S. Treasury securities lawfully purchased by the Russian Federation. Legally, those securities are still owned by Russia, but they cannot be sold, traded, transferred or used as collateral.

“Now the U.S. is trying to seize those securities. This is outright theft. Such theft is contrary to numerous provisions of domestic and international law, but the U.S. is pushing the main custodian, Euroclear in Belgium, and European banks to amend their laws or ignore them for this purpose.

“Other countries are watching. China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and other nations have hundreds of billions of dollars each in U.S. Treasuries in their reserve positions. Watching what the U.S. is doing to Russia is causing those countries to consider alternatives to Treasuries.

“That’s easier said than done. If U.S. Treasuries are in danger of being stolen, it’s not clear euro- or yen-denominated securities are any safer. Gold is the liquid, safe alternative and appeals to many investors in a world where Treasuries can be confiscated at will.”

Jim’s intermediate-term target for gold is $3,200 — the inflation-adjusted equivalent of its blowoff top at $800 in 1980.

Great Moments in Marketing

Apparently, this is for real…

According to multiple reports on social media, the Five Below chain sells it for $5. You can find it marked up at a higher price on eBay and something called Poshmark. Hard pass…

Ponzi Schemes: In the Eye of the Beholder

“Insanity,” a reader writes of Bitcoin over $70,000.

“Over the past few years most of the investment letter crowd has jumped on board, but nobody has ever been able to explain (at least in credible terms) why it or any other crypto including Dogecoin which reportedly was started up as a joke has any value.

“Yeah, yeah, we know about blockchain ad nauseum, but it's essentially keystroke cash. The ultimate Ponzi-like scheme and admittedly many will make some serious coin (no pun), but still isn't it all about missing the ride up and hearing the ‘experts’ reassure us that it has value ‘because it just does’? Or maybe I'm just an idiot, maybe not.

“Keep looking up.”

Dave responds: See above. Crypto is already solving real-world problems — and in a nimble way that’s making an end-run around corporate behemoths like Microsoft and Amazon.

True, we’re still some distance from the day when crypto and decentralized finance can “disintermediate” traditional finance — banking without banks, insurance without insurance companies, equities trading without exchanges and brokerages — but thousands of smart and enterprising people are hard at work on the task.

Also — and not to go all nihilist on you here — if crypto is smoke and mirrors, is it any more smoke and mirrors than traditional asset classes?

Think about it: Very little of the post-2008 stock market rally has been driven by “innovation.” It’s been mostly share buybacks made possible by crazy-low interest rates. That is, financial engineering.

It all comes back to the dangers of a phenomenon I call “just world investing.” In a just world, Tesla would not have benefited from enormous tax breaks that as of late last year made the company more valuable than the rest of the top 10 global automakers combined.

But it’s not a just world… and back in the day some of our readers made 10X their money on TSLA.

We can’t invest in a just world. We have to invest in the real world. And in the real world, James Altucher says a major catalyst is coming to a select group of cryptos tomorrow morning. For one in particular, he sees 10X in the next 18 months… and 100X by 2030.

“That’s what I predict,” he says — “and it would be enough to turn my personal $100,000 stake into $10 million.”

If that’s what he’s doing with his own money, shouldn’t you at least consider the possibilities?

Again, the action gets underway in a little over 18 hours from the time this message hits your inbox. Take a look at James’ arguments… then decide for yourself.

Best regards,

 

 

 

 

Dave Gonigam
Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets