Dear A-Letter Reader:
The dollar-as you've read in this space before-looks very vulnerable. The U.S. economy is mired in a mountain of debt. And the ballooning trade and fiscal deficits just add to a dangerous structural imbalance on a daily basis. We've also got a new Fed Chairman at the helm who has recently spoke a bit too candidly and sent currency and financial markets reeling.
But perhaps the last straw for the U.S. dollar will be when the Fed stops rising interest rates. Once this happens, the correction of the debt-plagued dollar could be sharp and swift. When that happens... is still anyone's guess, though it will probably be some time this year.
The Sovereign Society has tried to provide you with various ways to protect yourself and profit during the dollar's decline. These include recommendations in precious metals and miners that have already posting gains of 101%, 112% and 421% for members. They include overseas shares that are showing returns of 37%, 71% and 93% since we recommended them. They include commodity plays that have garnered gains of 59%, 127% and 224%.
But you can also trade on the dollar's inevitable demise directly. And the best way to do that is in the Spot Currency Market.
This market happens to be the largest financial market in the world. Its daily volume, for instance, is 40 times larger than the entire NY Stock Exchange. It's also helped create some of the trading community's great fortunes. Yet most individual investors remain appallingly ignorant of the opportunities in this immense arena.
Over the next four days, we're doing our part to rectify that situation.
With great pleasure, I turn it over to my colleagues, as they share with you "The Secrets of the Spot Market..."
ERIC ROSEMAN, Investment Director
on behalf of The Sovereign Society
Secrets of the Spot Market (Part I):
How to Make Double-digit Yields on Cash and Triple-digit Returns Overall
The single largest financial market in the world is invisible to most investors.
It has $1.9 trillion in daily volume-more than all the stock markets in the world combined. It's also a market that deals with a commodity you and everyone you know use every single day of your lives guaranteed.
Yet chances are you've never traded in this market.
We're talking about the Spot Currency Market.
In many ways, the currency market is the lifeblood of the global financial system. After all, we all use currencies every single day. Cross-border products, services and investments are bought and sold around the world every day. That international trade involves foreign currencies. And those currencies are traded in "the Spot Market."
The Spot Market: Where Buffet Claimed a Billion Dollars on a Single Trade
Many say Warren Buffett is the most successful investor of all time. He is widely hailed as a deep-value, risk-averse investor. And he has made his fortune by and large in the equity markets and buying controlling stakes of entire companies. Yet, just four years ago, Warren Buffett took a position in the currency markets for the first time in his life.
Specifically, he placed a $12 billion dollar trade against the U.S. dollar. Subsequently, he increased that investment to over $20 billion. When Warren Buffet makes that kind of statement with his investors' money, it's usually worthwhile to try to figure out why.
The spot market is also where famed global investor George Soros made $1 billion on a single trade in 1992. He bet against the British Pound. And when the Bank of England decided to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, the pound plummeted and Soros had his 10-figure payday in a matter of weeks.
And the spot market is where Bruce Kovner began trading at age 31 with $3,000 and then went on to build a $1.8 billion fortune, according to Forbes Last year alone, in fact, according to The Financial Times, Kovner made $400 million.¹
Yet the spot market is also where...
- You can still open an account with as little as a few hundred dollars.
- You trade without commissions. You only pay spreads and for the major currency pairs, which are typically no more than 3/100ths of a percent.
- The market is 40 times larger than the New York Stock Exchange-so it's extremely liquid. You can open and close a position on the same day.
- It's a market that never sleeps. It's international so you can also trade 24 hours a day, five days a week.
- You can trade conservatively for yield and appreciation or aggressively with leverage (while still limiting your risk).
- You can create "virtual options" that never expire, that have no "time premium" making the trade more expensive, that pay you interest (credited to your account daily), and give you unlimited upside with limited downside.
- And-contrary to popular perception-the spot market is actually less volatile than stocks.
We'll cover each of these aspects of the spot market in greater detail in coming days. But first, let's cover the basics. Let's talk about what affects the value of currencies and how exchange rates are quoted.
Cash with a Different Accent
Just over four years ago-at about the time Buffett started privately making his big bets against the dollar-you could buy a euro for about 87 U.S. cents. Today, it would cost you about $1.28.²
The euro, in other words, has risen about 46% against the U.S. dollar since April of 2002 date. So if you had put some dollars into euros in the spring of '02, those dollars would be worth 46% more today.
During the same period, the U.S. dollar has fallen 46% against the Australian dollar. At the same time, cash held in Australian dollars has paid a higher interest rate. Over the last three years, the spot market rate on the Aussie has averaged about 5%. That means, you could have collected anywhere between 3%-5% on your cash over the last three years... even while it rose in value by an additional 46%.
That's the power of the spot market. Instead of losing purchasing power, your cash would have gained in the neighborhood of 75%, including appreciation and roughly 4% annual compounded returns over the last four-plus years.
What's more, there are strategies in the spot market that can help you turn that same 75% into 750% gains. Those kind of returns are produced by leverage. But we'll get into that in the next few days. First we'll do a little more work on the basics. And it doesn't get any more basic than the very important question we'll be dealing with tomorrow...
What makes one currency fall or rise in value against another?
Stay tuned for the answer, tomorrow...