Post: #1

I've been reading a lot of The Sovereign Man and The Dollar Vigilante lately, both of which share a philosophy. Anyone here have experience with their paid subscriptions? They seem relatively inexpensive, but I'd like to know how much value they offer, especially as it pertains to someone who is not already rich and doesn't have a couple tens of thousands of dollars to play with. I'm looking for concrete info on how to begin slowly building my investments, not just wishy-washy, "We read this NYT article and, boy, will things get bad, better get ready!" silliness.

I've found some random threads from other forums where people generally speak positively of Simon Black. Haven't found any feedback on the Dollar Vigilante guy, though he strikes me as too whiny for his own good and not particularly trustworthy. That doesn't mean that his subscription doesn't offer valuable advice, though.

Any experiences with either or similar sites?

Post: #2

(11-27-2013 10:12 PM)Fathom Wrote:  I've been reading a lot of The Sovereign Man and The Dollar Vigilante lately, both of which share a philosophy. Anyone here have experience with their paid subscriptions? They seem relatively inexpensive, but I'd like to know how much value they offer, especially as it pertains to someone who is not already rich and doesn't have a couple tens of thousands of dollars to play with. I'm looking for concrete info on how to begin slowly building my investments, not just wishy-washy, "We read this NYT article and, boy, will things get bad, better get ready!" silliness.

I've found some random threads from other forums where people generally speak positively of Simon Black. Haven't found any feedback on the Dollar Vigilante guy, though he strikes me as too whiny for his own good and not particularly trustworthy. That doesn't mean that his subscription doesn't offer valuable advice, though.

Any experiences with either or similar sites?

Simon Black gets mixed reviews. Not all of his information pans out, but many people do praise him.

IMO, stay away from Jeff Berwick and The Dollar Vigilante. He gives advice about carrying firearms illegally in Mexico and confronting officers at border security areas. He will get someone in serious trouble some day.

Post: #3

Sovereign Man is kind of interesting but the doomsday stuff gets old and I think he pushes Chile too hard. For the average guy who doesn't have much money and doesn't have a good grasp on how markets work I would say there isn't much actionable information there. As far as "concrete" information on slowly building investments, that's a tricky one. Most managed money (mutual funds, etc) underperforms the S&P 500, but the S&P 500 is reaching all time highs nearly everyday and a lot of smart people like Hugh Hendry, Kyle Bass, Marc Faber, Jim Rogers and the rest of the ZeroHedgers think the price of the S&P 500 is insanely high and is only that high because of the Quantitative Easing programs, so if the elusive Fed taper ever happens then the S&P 500 will nosedive. The irony is that the S&P 500 potentially nosediving is the very thing that prevents the Fed from tapering or raising interest rates. So the S&P 500 will probably continue to go higher as long as QE continues and in doing so will outperform any mutual fund, but the higher it goes the faster it will drop like a stone if the Fed ever backs off. In this environment there really isn't any passive investment that will give you a safe and dependable yield beyond the 10 year treasury rate. Sure a fund might have a 20% return in 2013 but that's all beta (beta meaning the market return, alpha meaning the return above beta, not the usual context of those words on this forum). A fund that basically tracks the S&P 500 beta return is going to go down with the S&P 500 as much as it goes up, and the increasing Fed inflated S&P 500 gains are at increasing risk of falling hard.

So to put this into something actionable, I'll make a suggestion. It will require some reading on how the S&P 500, ETFs and options work, but you should read up on how this stuff works anyway. If I were you I would buy and hold shares of SPY which is an S&P 500 ETF. I would then sell "bull put spreads" ( http://www.theoptionsguide.com/bull-put-spread.aspx ) that will juice your SPY returns and give you some alpha. I would also buy some way out-of-the-money put options on a rolling basis that will lose money nearly every time and eat into your alpha but they will cover your SPY shares if the S&P 500 implodes, which might happen.

Post: #4

Don't get the Sovereign Man paid subscription. He changed things up from a monthly newsletter to "alerts." He also raised the price. So you pay more for less. His newsletters had been getting less and less useful. He's coasting and like Tail said, not all his info pans out.

Post: #5

Simon Black newsletter has solid info, at least the issues I checked out. But the info was more geared towards people with lots of money, who can invest a lot of coin to get second passports and so on.

and yeah his doomsday marketing gets old...

Post: #6

looks like this was covered already: /thread-7892.html

Post: #7

Thanks, everyone and Sean for the detailed advice. I found that other thread after having posted mine. (Sometimes it's better to search the forum via Google than its own search function.)

(11-28-2013 07:29 AM)w00t Wrote:  Simon Black newsletter has solid info, at least the issues I checked out. But the info was more geared towards people with lots of money, who can invest a lot of coin to get second passports and so on.

Right. My next question, then: could anyone point me toward any resources on how to begin learning about business? I'm really ignorant on this front and most business or entrepreneurship books are justy a bunch of 'rah-rah, you can do it' waste of time or technical information like the legalities of incorporating. What I really need is a mentor who'd just let me watch what he does and explain things to me, but I have no wealthy family member or close family friend. I'm currently studying to take the actuarial exams, but as highly paid a job as that may be, I'd still never be truly free and (really) rich; I'm still busting my ass so I can sell my life to the highest bidder. I want to be independent and free.

Is the following true:

I have the impression there are two kind of entrepreneurs. One is the kind most think of. He had a "great idea" and started a business, people liked it, then he made money. An example of this would be, "the guy who invented this thing, and then he got rich."

The other kind simply enters a given market and makes money not by thinking of the next big thing, but by forming relationships, making deals, joint ventures, and investing. An example of this would be the two owners of the business to which I'm currently selling my life hours for too few dollars. They partnered, opened an insurance brokerage, and used their relationships to build it up. They did not "invent" anything or innovate, they simply got into a given field and started going at it.

Is this true? If so, how can I become the second type?

One more question. Whether I have money or not, some things I read (i.e. like the Simon Black guy), I wouldn't even know where to get started. For example, he speaks of buying foreign farmland. How the hell would I even know where to begin, what is and isn't good, or where I should look in the first place? How do you do these things, how do you get the know-how?

Post: #8

(11-28-2013 12:10 PM)Fathom Wrote:  One more question. Whether I have money or not, some things I read (i.e. like the Simon Black guy), I wouldn't even know where to get started. For example, he speaks of buying foreign farmland. How the hell would I even know where to begin, what is and isn't good, or where I should look in the first place? How do you do these things, how do you get the know-how?

I have the answer, but you may not like it. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It takes patience and diligence over a long period of time. A mentor relationship is great, if you can build one. Sadly, most people cannot.

You need to take great care in selecting three or four topics that really interest you. Then you need to devote anywhere from ten to thirty minutes on each of them every day. You will be amazed at the level of knowledge that you will acquire after a few years. You can also save your capital during that same period, so that you can slowly put it to use as you learn what you need to know.

I say that you need to "take great care in selecting three or four topics that really interest you," because you do not want to spend years of your life learning something when you should have learned something else. In your case, I envision the topics as economics, offshore living, web-based income, and business start-ups. That sounds very similar to myself. That second category is how I found this forum.

Typically, you will begin by searching on Google and reading books, then getting on email lists and forums, then forming a network of like-minded individuals, joining some exclusive private forums, and visiting foreign lands and businesses. Your knowledge base will eventually attract like-minded people.

Post: #9

I agree with Tail Gunner. Start choking down some elephant. There's no shortcut. When I was younger I was trying to establish a mentor type relationship with my friend's father who was a rich real estate guy, and one day during our conversation he looked at me and said "the only helping hand you're ever going to get is at the end of your arm." Best advice I ever got.

Post: #10

(11-28-2013 02:13 AM)SeanBateman Wrote:  think the price of the S&P 500 is insanely high and is only that high because of the Quantitative Easing programs, so if the elusive Fed taper ever happens then the S&P 500 will nosedive.

dumb question, but why is QE rallying the market?

Post: #11

Well, Sovereign Man follows the Austrian economics school of thought, if that's your view as well you'll like him. I personally don't agree with the Austrians so I don't follow him, I actually read his blog occasionally for awhile until I just got bored of the whole thing. He just repeats the same things over and over and over... and over. here's what you'll get from his site:

"the big crisis is upon us and the world is going to end tomorrow"
"hyper inflation is going to destroy the economy"
"buy gold"
"move to Chile"

There, that's it, save yourself some time and read some real economy/markets sources.

Even when they've been proven wrong time and again the Simon Blacks and Zero Hedges of the world just keep saying the same thing over and over, for years. Sure, eventually some day we'll have a crisis, a stock market crash, whatever, because that's just the nature of the economy, and they'll be happy and think they've been right all along, even though they missed on the good times.

Post: #12

thats just his marketing angle, the newsletter actually contains solid info about obtaining second passports, residency in tax havens, opening offshore bank accounts, investment tips and so on.

Post: #13

Thank you, Tail Gunner, your post was very valuable to me. It hit me on an instinctive level, confirming what I've been suspecting all along but always thought was just my naive impression. I've printed it.

Teutatis, that was amusing! You're right, way too much repetitive bleating, though I do believe in their main points.

Post: #14

(11-28-2013 04:51 PM)Pyre Wrote:  

(11-28-2013 02:13 AM)SeanBateman Wrote:  think the price of the S&P 500 is insanely high and is only that high because of the Quantitative Easing programs, so if the elusive Fed taper ever happens then the S&P 500 will nosedive.

dumb question, but why is QE rallying the market?

Bonds are generally considered to be low risk and low return while stocks are high risk and high return. Typically institutional portfolios are a balance of the two. The Fed is suppressing the bond yields across the yield curve by keeping the federal funds rate near zero and by the outright purchase of $85 billion worth of a mix of treasuries and mortgage bonds every month which creates artificial demand for the bonds, keeping the rates lower at auction. Normally an institutional investor like a pension fund that has to move around massive amounts of money in a conservative manner but still achieve roughly 8% return would buy a lot of bonds when the interest rates are higher. But with interest rates so low that pension fund money is forced into riskier assets like stocks to achieve the return that it needs to meet its payout obligations. If you look at the total market cap of the US stock market and subtract the QE injected capital from the last few years the stock market basically flatlines. That's the intention of the Fed's QE programs, to push up asset prices. But the further they artificially inflate asset prices the more dependent those high asset prices become on the QE programs. Without trying to sound grim, basically every developed country that isn't a major natural resource exporter like Australia and Canada has crossed the point of no return with these programs. Japan and the EU are doing the same thing. The asset prices and government budget deficits are so dependent on debt expansion that there is no way for these countries to rein it in without causing a big GDP contraction. And ignorant voters don't vote for candidates who run on a platform of both tax increases and budget decreases, both of which are needed to even begin to slow the rate of increase of the debt expansion, let alone run a balanced or cash positive long term budget and actually retire some of the debt, which will simply never happen. The basic arithmetic of the situation shows that it get ugly eventually. It is a little scary when you dig into the numbers. When the amount of money required to service the outstanding debt exceeds total government revenue that's when things like currency devaluations and bond defaults start to happen, and Japan is approaching that threshold. When countries like Argentina or Russia default it's not that big of a deal globally. But if a major structurally important currency like the yen started to spiral out of control then it really could bring down this whole dog and pony show. It's alarmist to say it would come to the point of needing guns and silver coins, but it probably will make the collapse in 2008 seem minor by comparison. Sorry to go on a rant here but it's hard to sum up what's happening in monetary policy on a sentence or two.

Post: #15

QE is basically when the Federal Reserve buys a massive amount of bonds from banks and the gov't, which pumps newly created money into the financial system, and as a result of the liquidity is suppose to drive down interest rates and increase lending by banks. The money doesn't always go to lending, but also to bank reserves and to investment. The money has to be invested somewhere and the stock market has been where most of it has been invested since the crisis.

The short answer is QE puts more money into the system, which leads to more money in the stock market, which leads to higher stock prices, therefore rallying the market.

Post: #16

For an alternate take on QE, take a look at this report by McKinsey: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/economi..._and_risks

They argue that there is no evidende that QE has had a lasting discernible effect on equities markets. I haven't dug into it yet, so I can't offer an opinion. It's worth a read, though, for anyone interested in monetary policy.

Post: #17

A question regarding offshore bank accounts. U.S. citizens are required to report these in a special form. Does that not defeat the purpose of opening one? If they know about it, can they not seize it? Perhaps they cannot seize it directly, since it's in a foreign nation, but could the IRS make your life difficult or place you under scrutiny if they know you have one?

Post: #18

(11-29-2013 07:13 PM)Fathom Wrote:  A question regarding offshore bank accounts. U.S. citizens are required to report these in a special form. Does that not defeat the purpose of opening one? If they know about it, can they not seize it? Perhaps they cannot seize it directly, since it's in a foreign nation, but could the IRS make your life difficult or place you under scrutiny if they know you have one?

The reporting requirements, although egregious, do not defeat the purpose of opening an offshore bank account, because there are many potential purposes in opening one. If your prime concern is an ever-increasing police state and the possible seizure of the funds in your offshore account, then it may seem counter-productive to open one and then report it. Even in that case, however, there are jurisdiction barriers that a government must overcome before it may seize your cash.

If your main reason for opening an offshore bank account is to accomplish any of the following goals, however, then you may wish to consider opening one:

(1) to diversify where your money is held in multiple jurisdictions across the globe, some of which have far safer banking systems than the western world.

(2) to make it more difficult for judgment debtors to reach your money.

(3) to form business entities with bank accounts to facilitate conducting businesses located offshore.

(4) to allow offshore business entities to accumulate profits in order to defer taxation until the money is brought back onshore.

(5) for numerous other reasons, limited only by your imagination. Think outside the box.

Post: #19

I used to be a Sovereign Man subscriber and went to the most recent conference in Chile... I also subscribe to some Casey Research newsletters.... SM is not an investment newsletter and if you don't have some money then you will basically just be reading for entertainment. Casey Research has a few investment newsletters but they are mostly speculative, very speculative.

Post: #20

(11-29-2013 08:17 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  I used to be a Sovereign Man subscriber and went to the most recent conference in Chile... I also subscribe to some Casey Research newsletters.... SM is not an investment newsletter and if you don't have some money then you will basically just be reading for entertainment. Casey Research has a few investment newsletters but they are mostly speculative, very speculative.

How was the conference?

I have been curious for some years now what type of information and connections that could be had at these.

Post: #21

(11-29-2013 08:52 PM)Laner Wrote:  

(11-29-2013 08:17 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  I used to be a Sovereign Man subscriber and went to the most recent conference in Chile... I also subscribe to some Casey Research newsletters.... SM is not an investment newsletter and if you don't have some money then you will basically just be reading for entertainment. Casey Research has a few investment newsletters but they are mostly speculative, very speculative.

How was the conference?

I have been curious for some years now what type of information and connections that could be had at these.

Well Simon Black has gotten pretty big so his readers are more diverse.. TBH I wasn't impressed with the attendees and that was probably the biggest reason I went. There seemed to be to many right wing small business owners and not enough libertarian minded globetrotting entrepreneurs. Half the people I met seemed to be everyday divorced men with average careers. I met up with an old Air Force buddy there who went to the conference in Panama a few years ago when SB was still unheard of to most and he raved about the connections he met. He was as disappointed with the attendees in Chile as I was.

I will say that the goal of the conference was not just to spread info but to take immediate steps. They had the bankers, brokers, lawyers in the hotel and you could open the accounts right there with the necessary documents which he informed us about a month or 2 in advance.

The conference was actually really well put together, My buddy said it was managed much better than in Panama, just a different type of attendees. I also went out drinking every night so I wasn't the best at mingling after day 1... I'm sure there were some really good connections to be made and I missed out.

Examples of a few attendees.

One guy was explaining to me that he was afraid to open a bank account in Georgia because the IRS might find out.... He was amazed when I let him know he absolutely needed to report it, he never had any idea. I'm not sure how this guy ever missed this info then dropped serious money to go to this conference in Chile.

In a Q&A another guy asked Simon some shit about how long it would take one of our generals to say enough is enough and take control of the white house... as if a coup d'état is a good thing lol Simon was pretty taken back by this question.

There was an extremely beta little man who was married to an abusive oversized russian women. She was always yelling at him and putting him down... yanking him around by his arm lol. She then went on to bitch out the Chileans at the hotel for stealing/losing her passport by the copy machine, she was probably at fault.

Pretty sure there was a tranny who attended. Not kidding.

Peter Schiff did not like his pregnant fiance all up on me and my buddy. That girl definitely trapped him, I cant believe he would be so stupid.

Post: #22

(11-29-2013 08:17 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  I used to be a Sovereign Man subscriber and went to the most recent conference in Chile... I also subscribe to some Casey Research newsletters.... SM is not an investment newsletter and if you don't have some money then you will basically just be reading for entertainment. Casey Research has a few investment newsletters but they are mostly speculative, very speculative.

I subscribe to Casey Extraordinary Technology, which is quite expensive at $995/year.

They have made same good calls as you can see from all their closed stock recommendations with profit/loss for this year :


CSCO 9%
GOGO 60%
PEGA 54%
FLDM 96%
SNCR 83%
UNIS -15%
MNKD 197%
ALNY 127%
ISIS 147%
OCZ -76%
FTNT 102%
AMZN 49%
SGEN 108%
APKT -3%

Post: #23

(12-03-2013 12:44 AM)Steve9 Wrote:  

(11-29-2013 08:17 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  I used to be a Sovereign Man subscriber and went to the most recent conference in Chile... I also subscribe to some Casey Research newsletters.... SM is not an investment newsletter and if you don't have some money then you will basically just be reading for entertainment. Casey Research has a few investment newsletters but they are mostly speculative, very speculative.

I subscribe to Casey Extraordinary Technology, which is quite expensive at $995/year.

They have made same good calls as you can see from all their closed stock recommendations with profit/loss for this year :


CSCO 9%
GOGO 60%
PEGA 54%
FLDM 96%
SNCR 83%
UNIS -15%
MNKD 197%
ALNY 127%
ISIS 147%
OCZ -76%
FTNT 102%
AMZN 49%
SGEN 108%
APKT -3%

Me too...Best Newsletter they have... by far. Though I'm sure if you start subscribing to International speculator right at the beginning of a bull move in metals you can make a ton as well....