The Peter Schiff Show Podcast

* Today we got the government's Non-Farm Payroll report, otherwise known as the Jobs Report, for the month of April and pretty much all the mainstream Wall Street guys were looking for another strong report * In fact, earlier in the week Goldman Sachs was out saying that the 200,000 consensus estimate was too low! * The optimism was unfazed by the much weaker than expected ADP report I spoke about on my last podcast on Wednesday, which came in much lighter than expected * So, people didn't care, they said, "That's a one-off event, we're still looking for a good number, and we got a weak report * Instead of 200,000 jobs we only got 160,000 jobs * And they actually revised down the last couple of months * But let's get into some of the details, because it gets worse, the further beneath the surface you look * The unemployment rate held steady at 5%; they were expecting it to notch down to 4.9% - that did not happen * Private payrolls also much lighter than expected; they were looking for 195,000; they got 171,000 and they revised down last month's from 195K to 184K * They did get the .3% increase in average hourly earnings, but they forgot to point out that they revised month's .3% increase down to .2% so you can chalk that one up as a miss, despite the fact that nobody was talking about it * The bigger miss was in the Labor Force Participation Rate * Last month it was 63%, which was a move up, but in April it came back down to 62.8% * 562,000 people left the labor force during the month of April * A massive exodus led by young people * A breakdown in the Household Survey for ages 20-24 reported 155,000 job losses in April * For ages 25 - 54 -  284,000 jobs losses * For ages over the age of 55 - this is the highest it has ever been * Janet Yellen still wants to pretend that the reason the Labor Force Participation Rate is declining is because the Baby Boom is retiring - how much longer is she going to get away with that lie? * The Baby Boom is too broke to retire * The people leaving the workforce are young people in their 20's and 30's * A breakdown of job gains by sector shows the biggest sector is professional business and temporary services - 56,000 gains * Healthcare and education was high, and leisure and hospitality came in third * Manufacturing barely gained any jobs after a huge loss the prior month * Wholesale trade barely gained any * Construction, after a big jump last month - only 1,000 jobs * Retail trade lost 3,000 jobs * Mining and logging continues to lose jobs * On a good note, government actually lost jobs * That's a good thing - we don't need so many people working for government - they're not productive * Rick Santelli made a very good point today on CNBC, talking about all the jobs created at the TSA * We're not better off with those jobs - they decrease our productivity * As I mentioned on my last podcast, we've now had 2 consecutive quarters of losses in productivity * Despite this bad jobs report, the market shrugged it off * The stock market rallied because bad news is good news - the odds of a Fed rate hike are now the lowest they've ever been * If you look at the Foreign Exchange markets, the dollar was broadly higher today * It was up big against the Australian dollar because the Reserve Bank of Australia lowered their inflation forecast * They lowered it from 2-3% to 1-2% * You would think that's good news, because it means the cost of living will rise only 1-2% * Back in the day, news of low inflation sent a currency higher, because it was not losing purchasing power * The news sent the Australian dollar tumbling because the market now expects the Australian Reserve will have to cut rates several times this year in order to protect Australians from a cost of living that is not rising fast enough * This is keeping pressure on other currencies * Even though we're pushing the next U.S.

* And then there was one; Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee for 2016 * I remember when this Republican Primary started and the field was very wide * They had to split the debates up between the main event and the under card because there were so many candidates * Nobody in the mainstream really gave Donald Trump a shot * Even though I wasn't supporting, Trump - I was supporting Rand Paul and more recently Ted Cruz as the candidates who were ideologically closest to me * I always thought that Donald Trump was a very serious candidate and thought that he had the best odds of winning and that's what happened * I always recognized the appeal of his message * I know the economy is much worse than is generally perceived and, for the typical American, living in a rotten economy, Trump seems to be the candidate that is going to appeal to them * He's not talking about cutting social security or taking away government benefits, he's trying to be all things to all people * It's a populist message - Everybody's going to win, just elect me and I'm going to make all your problems go away * How am I going to make them go away? Because I'm different * I'm not your typical politician, I'm a billionaire businessman who knows what I'm doing and everybody in government are incompetent fools * He's right about that part - everybody in government is incompetent * But that does not mean that Trump is a panacea to immediately make these problems go away * But you know what? Why not take a shot at it? * I knew that his message is powerful and would resonate * Everybody is writing him off, saying he will lose to Hillary Clinton * I don't believe so * I think the media is still underestimating Donald Trump, despite the fact that they completely surprised them by winning the Republican nomination * He might surprise them again by winning the General Election and being our next President * Because, if you are anti-establishment, why would you vote for Hillary Clinton, even if you are a Democrat * Why do you think Bernie Sanders continues to get so much support? * He beat Hillary again in Indiana yesterday * But of course Hillary has such a massive lead, thanks to all these super delegates, it doesn't even matter how many primaries he wins - he can win all the primaries from now until the election and Hillary is still going to be the nominee * Unless Bernie Sanders can flip the super delegates * Maybe if she gets indicted between now and the convention, well maybe that will do the trick * But Hillary Clinton couldn't win in Indiana because there weren't enough minorities there * When you just look your basic Democratic American, they're overwhelmingly going for Bernie Sanders * The reason they're doing that is for the same reason that Republicans are going for Donald Trump * I said many times I think Donald Trump will be able to tailor his message specifically to appeal to the Bernie Sanders Democrats * He's not going to get all of the Bernie Sanders Democrats - the far left Socialists * But there are a lot of people who are voting for Bernie Sanders because they can't stand Hillary Clinton * Trump has a good shot at getting those people, in fact I think Donald Trump can do better with the Democrats than Ronald Regan * And it was those Regan Democrats that really put Ronald Regan in the White House * Many people are too young to remember, but when Ronald Regan first got the nomination, the media said, well that's it, he's going to lose in a landslide * Nobody thought he could beat Jimmy Carter, an incumbent President and Ronald Regan was so far to the right, he was even more to the right than Barry Goldwater, and Barry Goldwater got demolished when he ran against Lyndon Johnson * But Regan ended up winning in a landslide * The same thing could happen with Donald Trump * By the way,

* Gold finally traded about $1300 this morning; it was the first time since January of 2015 that the price of gold traded above $1300 * But by the time the U.S. Stock market opened, the price of gold started to sell off, and it couldn't hold $1300, in fact, it ended negative on the day - we closed about $1291 * When gold failed to hold $1300, there was a lot of selling in gold stocks; in fact gold stocks were way up in the pre-market, up from 2-7% * Some of them opened with new 52-week highs, but then the selling commenced and gold stocks went down, silver stocks went down - GDX ended down about 1.7% on the day - not a very big move * There will be some people out there who will say, "It's a reversal" * We didn't hold $1200 either, the first time we got above it, but the next time we went to $1200, we got to $1260 * I think something similar might happen with $1300 * If I were a bear, I would cover, I'd be buying back * I think it would be smart to buy the dip * Especially when you look at the weakness in the U.S. dollar with continued today, in fact the dollar index traded down to about 92.50 * This is the first time since January of 2015 that the dollar index has been below 93 * The euro is above 115, that, too, is the first time since January of 2015 * But the dollar is weak across the board, and it's going to continue to get weak especially if we keep getting the weak data points like the data that came out today

* Friday April 29, 2016 was the final trading day for the month of April and I think this will turn out to be a pivotal month for the month of April and I will talk more about that later in this report * I wanted start by talking about the Federal Reserve's decision on Wednesday not to raise interest rates * Few people really believed they would, but earlier in the year it was widely believed that by April the Fed would have raised interest rates at least one more time, given the fact that they began the tightening cycle in December with the first .25 rate hike * What's more important than the failure to raise rates again was what they wrote in their statement with respect to the idea that future rate hikes are forthcoming * The Fed is still clinging to the false narrative that this recovery that is basically already ended is on track, and that they will be raising interest rates at some point later in the year maybe 2 or 3 more times; they just decided not to do it in April * The only acknowledgement that the Fed made with respect to the economy was that growth was slowing * That is a dramatic understatement to say that growth has slowed * If you go back to December, when the Fed confidently announced their first rate hike, they were forecasting that the economy would grow by about 3% in the first quarter of 2016 * Yesterday we got the government's first estimate for Q1 growth rate and it came in at just .5% * You can hardly refer to that as a slowdown, when pretty much all of the growth that the Federal Reserve believed was going to materialize evaporated * I don't know how they can simply say growth is slowing - growth is non-existent * As a matter of fact, the New York, Fed, which recently began issuing its own GDP Now Forecast, are now forecasting that Q2 will be just .8% * Averaging the two quarters out, you barely have any economic growth * I think the New York Fed is still overly optimistic * I think the Q1 report of .5% will be negative after final revisions * I also believe Q2 is going to be worse than Q1 * Even if Q1 .5% holds, that represents the third consecutive quarter where GDP has declined * In fact 2015 Q4 was 1.4%, so .5% is less than half of the most recent quarter * I think that trend is going to continue * There are still a lot of people who believe we'll get a rebound in Q2, because we got a Q2 rebound in the prior 2 years. * But the New York Fed is already throwing cold water on the idea that there is going to be a rebound * What nobody is talking about is that the main reason for the Q2 rebound in the previous 2 years was because we had unseasonably cold winters * We just had the warmest winter in 120 years, so we're not going to bounce back from anything * In fact, I believe the winter was so warm, that we probably pulled forward some of the economic activity that might otherwise have happened in Q2, so I think Q2 is going to suffer * Additionally, we had big builds in inventories in the prior 2 second quarters - that's not going to happen this quarter * Our trade deficits are even bigger now than they used to be

* Earlier today the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee, (FOMC) began their 2-day meeting * It concludes tomorrow and at 2:00 they will announce their decision on interest rates * Nobody is anxiously awaiting that announcement * Although there were plenty of fools a few months ago who actually believed the Federal Reserve would be raising interest rates, in fact they thought they were going to raise them in March and then, when they didn't there were a lot of people who still thought they might do it in April * But some of these fools still believe the Fed is going to hike rates later in the year - maybe June * Maybe June, September and December * There are still people, like Goldman Sachs, who are looking for 3 rate hikes this year * I was on a panel months ago with Jim Rickards, whom I have a lot of respect for, and back then he argued with me, because he believed the Fed would raise rates 2 if not 3 times in 2016 * I said the Fed would not raise rates at all * Today I posted an interview that he gave on Bloomberg - now Jim Rickards says Janet Yellen has gone super-dove and she is not going to raise rates * The reason Jim Rickards disagreed with me on the panel a couple of months ago is that, although he agrees with my thoughts on the economy, is that he thought the Fed would not recognize that the economy is very weak, rather that it believes the economy is still recovering * He thought the Fed would raise rates anyway, which would cause a recession, cause the Fed to abort the increases, go back to zero and to QE4 * I said, I think we are going to skip all the rate hikes and go directly to rate cuts and QE4 * And now I think Jim has joined me in that perspective * The question is: Will the Federal Reserve actually admit that the economy is that weak, or just not raise rates, which is tantamount to an admission of weakness * We are going to get the first official look at Q1 GDP on Thursday * There's a good chance that we will print a negative number * And even if we don't print a negative number, it will be a single digit number less than 1 * And by the time they revise it the following month to incorporate all the bad news that comes after Thursday, I think they will revise it negative * Which means we're in a recession * If Q1 is negative, and I don't believe we will get a bounce-back in Q2 * I think Q1 is the high water mark and it's down hill from here * I think Q2 will be weaker regardless of how weak Q1 is, because we borrowed growth from Q2 because we had the warmest winter in 120 years * Companies are now winding down their bloated inventories that they built up the last couple of years * And because the trade deficits are getting bigger and not smaller * So we have a lot weighing down GDP in Q2 in an already weak economy * By the way, the Atlanta Fed revised up their Q1 GDP number from .3 to .4 * Why did they do that?  This is the second time the Atlanta Fed has upwardly revised their estimate, despite the fact that the economic data has gotten worse since their last estimate * If the data gets worse, why would you revise your forecast up? * To me something's going on, maybe it's the boys at the New York Fed putting pressure on Atlanta to be more optimistic, but we'll see, because we will get the first official numbers on Thursday * Let me go over some of the economic data that has come out just since my last podcast * On Friday last week, we got the PMI Flash Index for April - not a Q1 number * One of the first numbers for Q2 and it ain't pretty - the consensus was for an improvement * March was 51.4, and 52 was expected - we got 50.8 - much weaker than the Atlanta Fed thought * New Home Sales missed; they were looking for 522,000, we got 522,000 * The Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey General Activities Index, which was -13.6 in March * They were looking for an improvement to -9 in April and instead we got -13.9 * This is a Q2 number

* I recorded my last podcast on the afternoon of April 19, and I wanted to announce that later that evening, my first daughter was born - we named her Lilyan Ruth after both of our maternal grandmothers - so we now have Lilyan Ruth Schiff, she was 7 lbs 2 oz. of pure cuteness! * If you just looked at the close of the gold and silver market, you wouldn't know that much went on, gold closed up under $5 - silver was up about .04, but you wouldn't know that earlier in the morning gold was up better than $25, we did trade back above $1270 * Silver made a new high for the year - silver was up about 75¢ early in the morning, in fact I think it made its peak during the Draghi press conference * We were above $1760 and then, just around 9am or so, there was a huge seller in the gold and the silver market and the whole complex went negative and we managed to close slightly positive on the day, but we had a huge sell-off intra-day following a big rally * That doesn't mean the top is in - I think it's interesting; we just got a huge correction out of the way and the price went up - we flushed out a big seller and now that seller is out of the market and this market is still going a lot higher * I put an article on my Facebook page about how gold stocks are way up this year, and they are way up this year, but the article basically said, "Don't buy", because gold is going to sell off. * I'm seeing a log of mainstream articles now about why you should not jump on this bandwagon, how dangerous the gold market is * And all this is just music to my ears.  If you are bullish on gold, this is exactly what you want.  You want everybody to be skeptical. * You want this wall of worry, that gold and silver are going to climb, and we're going to climb with it while everybody else is worried about the crash, because they still don't get it. * They're still talking about how the Fed is going to raise rates, and how that's bad for gold * It's not bad for gold - it all depends on how the Fed raises rates * If the Fed raises rates Paul Volker style, really jacks them up there, yeah, that will be bad for gold * But they're not going to do that.  If they raise rates, slowly, which is the only way they can do that if they even raise them, they will be slower than Greenspan was * When Greenspan raised rates, that was great for gold, because he was very slow * Well, Yellen is going to be even slower * So if gold did well under Greenspan, it will do even better under Yellen hikes, if we even get hikes * If we even get hikes.  We could get cuts, QE4, negative rates * If the Fed raises rates a little bit, that's bullish for gold; if they don't raise rates at all, even more bullish for gold, or they cut rates, and gold goes ballistic * Either way, gold stocks are going up * Meanwhile Wall Street is looking at amazement at the rally and it wouldn't dawn on them to participate * The mainstream investment world is not on board.  The train has left - there's nobody on it * Eventually they're going to buy, just like they piled in to the gold trade when it was 17-18-1900, that's when the big firms started finally noticing it * Eventually they are going to realize... I think it is going to take Yellen admitting the economy is weak, of the Fed actually cutting rates, but by then the prices are going to be much higher than they are now and we keep getting bad economic news * But I want to talk first about the Draghi press conference * Mario Draghi of the ECB, leaving interest rates unchanged, and continuing their QE program * The euro initially rallied, even during the Q&A, but then at the end, the euro turned around with the gold market, and the euro ended up unchanged * Draghi made some interesting comments. One of them had to do with inflation * Draghi admitted that lower gas prices were helping European consumers, giving them more purchasing power

* Hi-Ho Silver! Seems to be the rallying cry for the day * The last podcast I recorded I talked about the breakout in silver and I actually regretted the fact that I didn't get a chance to talk about silver during my CNBC interview * On my last podcast I mentioned how strong silver had been looking and it held up extremely well in the gold selloff during the prior few days * Sure enough, we had a big breakout again today * Silver was above $17 earlier today, the first time it has been that high all year * Gold is still well below the highs, it needs to rally about $30 to get back to its high for this move * I mentioned on the last podcast that I though the strength in silver was a good leading indicator for both gold and silver * And I talked about all the traders who have been shorting silver, that had been a popular trade when the gold and silver ratio was breaking down, I thought that it made no sense to short silver * To me it was a much better trade to buy silver when it's as cheap as it's ever been relative to gold * This is good constructive action, in fact, the gold stocks are at new highs for the year * The GDX, as I speak, is up 4% on the day; it's above $23 - this is the high for the year * The juniors, GDXJ, that index is up over 6% -  today! This is a new 52-week high  

* This is another week of bad economic data that most people have ignored * The stock market was up this week; the Dow closed up 1.8% on the year * I don't know if the Dow was rising in spite the bad news or because of it * The bad news means the economy is weak and corporate earnings are not there, and there are high multiples * But of course, if the economy is weak, that takes the Fed out of the rate hiking game and I think puts it into the rate cutting - QE4 game * So the market is caught between the opposing forces of cheap money and falling earnings on the back of a weak economy * Gold was actually down on the week; it started off the week strong, then Thursday it got hit pretty good and today it recouped some of its losses * But the standout was silver *  Silver was up almost 6% on the week; this is a new high * Silver closed at the highest close of the year * In fact, silver was strong with gold on Monday and Tuesday and when gold sold off on Wednesday and Thursday, silver really held up * That's a good sign for both gold and silver * I was on CNBC.com this week and I meant to say something about silver * They're not even talking about silver in the mainstream media so they're missing an even bigger move * They're acknowledging that gold's going up but they're not even looking at silver * I mentioned on an earlier podcast that a number of people are shorting silver and buying gold because they saw the breakout to new highs on the gold/silver ratio and they wanted to jump on that trad * I thought that was the wrong thing to do * To me, seeing new highs in that ratio in favor of silver made me want to buy silver, since it's as cheap as it's been relative to gold * If you like gold, just buy it; don't short silver because you could turn a winning trade into a losing trade  

* The dollar index traded below 94 for a good part of the day, but it did manage to close up at 94 even, down just .20 * Gold was up another $19 * Silver really shined brightly today, up .54, just below $16/oz. * Mining stocks, of course, were on fire; GDX was up just under 6% on the day, GDXJ up just under 7% * This followed a spectacular day for the mining stocks on Friday * In fact, even though gold itself was down a couple of bucks, we had a huge up day in the gold stocks * Between  Friday and today, I think this is the biggest two back-to-back gains for gold stocks all year * The catalyst was the Atlanta Fed Q1 GDP estimate downgrade all the way down to .1 * If you remember, from listening to my podcasts, the very first time the Atlanta Fed came out with its upward revision, with a lot of fanfare, to 2.7%, I said that that was all political and that they would have to walk that back all quarter long, and now they have eliminated the entire estimated gain * A fair estimate might have been -.1, but President Obama is still saying we have the strongest advanced economy in the world * I don't know what his definition of "strong" or "advanced" is, but we might have one of the weakest of the advanced economies * It's just that nobody wants to accept that fact yet * Here's where it really gets interesting: CNBC was very dismissive of the weak economic numbers * They are characterizing the weak Q1 as similar to previous years' weak Q1, where the weather pushed back some economic activity to Q2, causing rebounds * They said the same thing is going to happen this year.  No it's not. * This year is different from last year * First, let's talk about inventories: February and January Wholesale Trade Inventories have been revised down from +.3 to -.2 * Last year, companies were still building up inventories, believing in the recovery narrative, boosting GDP * The inventory unwind that I have been talking about for the last year is just beginning * It started in Q1 of this year, and this inventory sell-down is going to subtract from GDP * Here's another factor: the weather * The weather for the last two first quarters was very cold, pushing economic activity to Q2, helping Q2 to rebound * That's not what happened this year.  The first quarter of this year was the warmest in over 120 years * So obviously there was no economic activity pushed forward due to weather, if anything, the weather might have pulled some activity from Q2 to Q1 * As weak as Q1 was, it might have been weaker if cold weather had suspended some economic activity * The third difference is the trade deficit, which is rapidly growing this year * I think the growing trade deficit will continue to put a drag on Q2 GDP * The inventory liquidation will continue to be a drag on Q2 GDP * What that means is had the government properly seasonally adjusted Q1 for the unusually warm weather, I think Q1 GDP would be a lot lower * Q1 will be a contraction, and we are going to fall from there * If that is true, then we are in a recession * I think this recession will be longer in duration that the preceding one * The question is: What is the government going to do about it? * There was a meeting today between President Obama, Joe Biden and Janet Yellen * They have to figure out how to throw the economy a lifeline without admitting that it is drowning * The first thing the Fed can do is signal that they are not going to raise rates - change their forward guidance * By just not raising the rates, the specter of a hike remains * The question is what story will they use in order to not damage Obama's recovery narrative and Hillary Clinton's campaign? * Maybe they will blame it on the global economy, even though the U.S. is much weaker than many other economies * The Fed can't cut much - one cut and they're done, unless they want to venture into negative territory, which would be a disaster

* Today is the Wisconsin Primary but Donald Trump has been getting a lot of flack in the media over the last couple of days about his comments about the U.S. economy, particularly in the financial media because Donald Trump has now predicted a "very massive recession" in the U.S. * He didn't just say a recession, he's predicting a massive recession * Most of the pundits on television don't see any recession at all - not even a mild one * So here you have Donald Trump saying, not only is the recession going to be massive, it's going to be very massive * The media is all over Trump: "What is he talking about? The economy is in great shape! He's peddling all kinds of fiction! We have this massive economic growth!" * the President television today taking credit for this great economy with all these years of jobs * Of course what the President doesn't admit to, is, it's not job creation - it's job destruction * We're destroying full time jobs, the by-product of that destruction is that we create a bunch of part-time jobs that people don't really want but that's all they can get * Yet the President is taking credit for that * It's like setting a fire and taking credit for putting it out * That's what the Federal Reserve did with the 2008 Financial Crisis * Let's look at some of the economic news that came out over the past couple of days that resulted in the Atlanta Fed reducing its Q1 GDP estimate - yet again - to .4 * In last Friday's podcast I said that I thought they would be revising it down, and based on the numbers that just came out, they did * One if the reasons the Atlanta Fed cited for the revision was yesterday's release of February Factory Orders * They were expected to be down 1.6; instead it came out as -1.7, which was not that big a miss unless you consider the previous downward revision, which means it dropped from a lower level * That took something out of the GDP numbers as did the very bad auto sales that I did mention in Friday's podcast * Apparently the worse-than-expected trade deficit that came out today didn't even factor into their thinking, and I don't know why, because we were expecting $46.2 billion and instead we got $47.1 billion * That's a pretty big miss, and they took January's estimate which was originally $45.7 billion and raised that to $46.2 billion * We are still expecting the March number which will be factored into Q1 GDP, so I think the Atlanta Fed is still not low enough * Remember, too, one of the things that's helping the Q1 GDP is that most of the country had an unseasonably warm winter, because bad weather is factored into the estimate *

* Well, it's April Fool's Day today and there certainly were a lot of fools out on Wall Street buying all the nonsense about the better than expected Non-Farm Payroll numbers * Many of those fools were also fooled into thinking that these supposedly good jobs numbers puts a June rate hike back on the table * In fact, these April Fools were out in force in March when several Fed officials were talking about the possibility of April being a live meeting, and they bought it; Janet Yellen potentially set them straight a few days ago, but then again they hear some numbers that they think are better than expected, and they think, "Aha! The Fed is about to raise rates." * When are they going to wake up and realize that none of these numbers matter - it doesn't matter what they are, better than expected, worse than expected, the Fed can't raise rates * If the Fed could raise rates, they would have already done it. * Yes, they did raise rates in December, they didn't want to raise rates, they did it anyway, and look what happened * Maybe you can think of that rate hike as a trial balloon, but it was the Hindenburg of trial balloons, it blew up, and there's no way the Fed wants to launch another one * The first quarter came to an end yesterday and the U.S. stock market actually managed to gain * It was up about 1%, but the year started off as the worse year in the history of the stock market * Back in February, U.S. stocks had the weakest beginning of the year in the history of the stock market - going all the way through the great depression * That happened because the Fed raised rates * Do you think they want to take that chance again? * Why did the market recover?  Because people then believed that the Fed was not going to be raising rates, in fact, the weakness in the market is one of the reasons they believe that * So the market going down helped the Fed to change its tune, enabling the market to go back up * Now they're not going to take another chance to have to save it again * Next time it goes down, it keeps on falling * Beneath the surface, there was a lot of carnage in the market - there were a lot of stocks that got taken out and shot * Some big hedge funds had horrible results in the first quarter * Hedge funds were on the wrong side of so many macro trades this quarter * For example, the U.S. dollar had its worse quarter in over 5 years * You remember, that was one of the most crowded trades out there at the end of last year * Everybody with a hedge fund was long the dollar and short the euro, short the yen, short the aussie, short the Canadian, you name it they were short * Some of these guys were short the Chinese yuan - the yuan had a pretty good quarter - the strongest quarter in 2 years * Everybody who was long the dollar and short another currency got killed in the first quarter * The only people who lost more money than the ones shorting were the people shorting gold

* All the talk last week in the financial media was the fact that several Federal Reserve officials had given speeches somehow putting April back on the table as a live FOMC meeting, where the Fed might raise rates * In fact, even earlier this week, even yesterday, an official from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco commented that the Fed should continue with rate hikes because the economy is strong and the data is on target * I did not buy those comments for one second - my last podcast was titled, "Fed Bankers Bark But Won't Bite", and my commentary was titled, "Two Down and Two to Go" meaning that the Fed had already dispensed with two of the 4 rate hikes telegraphed for 2016 and they would take the other 2 rate hikes away * So, as everybody else was anticipating rate hikes, I was saying, not only are they not going to raise them in April, they are not going to raise them at all in 2016 * What happened today? Janet Yellen gave a speech to the Economic Club of New York, one of the most dovish speeches, if not the most dovish she has ever given * As a result of the speech, the price of gold was up about $20 on the day; we closed above $1240 * In fact a couple of days ago, we had gotten nearly down to $1200 * That shows you the strength of this bull market in gold, despite the talk of a rate hike in April, and despite the rally in the dollar, gold held its position above $1200 * To me, that's very bullish, the question when will all the bears throw in the towel? * Goldman Sachs is still looking for gold to hit $1000 - $900 * They're still looking for a strong dollar and a bunch of rate hikes * Although Goldman Sachs is not as bearish on gold as Harry Dent * Harry Dent called for $700 gold when I debated him on Friday's Alex Jones show * That was a good debate, and you can check it out on my YouTube channel * The dollar was down across the board today * The dollar index barely held on to the 95 handle, it closed at 95.15, off not quite a full percentage point on the day * Aussie dollar very strong on the day, up 1.4% * New Zealand dollar was the big winner on the day; that currency was up a full 2 percentage points on the day against the U.S. dollar * The Dow Jones liked the dovish news coming from the Fed; up just under 100 points * One of the reasons it wasn't up more is because of the financials in the Dow weighing it down * The NASDAQ was up 79.8 - that's a 1.7% increase * The NASDAQ was standing still compared to the gold stocks - the GDX up 5.77% * The GDXJ, the juniors, were up even more - about 6.3% today * That's where the action was and I think it will continue to be, based on Janet Yellen's Dovish remarks * I still don't think the conventional wisdom appreciates the extent of these dovish remarks * Let me go over her remarks; she started with a pretty upbeat assessment on the economy * She said the labor market is looking good, consumer spending is looking good, the housing recovery continues - she went over all these positives * She did list some minor negatives: Manufacturing and Net Exports, but she blamed all that on the strong dollar * She did also mention that capital spending and business investment was lackluster, noting in particular weakness in layoffs in the energy sector * But overall she was still upbeat on the economy * In fact, she admitted that the Fed's assessment of economic growth, inflation, and unemployment were exactly the same on December 2015, when they raised rates, and in the March meeting, where they didn't raise rates * She said the Fed's outlook on the economy had not changed at all * If it hasn't changed at all, why didn't they raise rates again? * They were telegraphing 4 rate hikes,

* The markets are closed on Good Friday, the markets are closed, but I did want to take time to record this podcast * Some people were wondering why I didn't do a podcast on Wednesday, the day we had a big drop in the price of gold * Believe me, I love doing podcasts, when the price of gold goes down, because I know a lot of people who are interested in gold want to know what my thoughts are on a day that it happens to go down * As it turns out, I did have an interview on CNBC Fast Money, and my comments are available on that interview, posted on my YouTube channel * Gold was down about $30 on that day and declined further yesterday * Silver was down as well * Gold is still holding above $1200 and gold is still positive on the year, not so for the U.S. Stock Market, which slipped back into negative territory this week * Not only was gold weaker but the dollar was considerably stronger, and commodities in general, like crude oil, copper - also went down * So what was the catalyst? * You might say maybe it was because gold failed to rally on the news of the terrorist attack in Belgium * News of this kind often triggers a knee-jerk reaction to buy gold, but the rally really wasn't that big, and when a market doesn't rally on good news, it generally means it is over bought, or  it's ready to go down * To me, however, that was a non-event, as far as gold is concerned * I don't buy gold because of geopolitical instability - that has nothing to do with my strategy * The real reason to buy gold has to do with inflation, and the central banks creating it, artificially low interest rates, negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing * It has nothing to do with terrorism, except to the extent that terrorist attacks lead to more government spending that is not supported by taxes which means more money printing, more inflation and bigger deficits * In the long run, it is good for gold, but in the short run, it is just a bunch of noise, but traders can certainly jump on these events as a reason to buy or sell and read things into a lack of movement, assuming there is a fundamental reason in the gold market, when there's not * The more significant factors that hurt gold were comments by several Federal Reserve officials, to the extent that April is now considered a "live" meeting, meaning that they still might raise interest rates * These comments are coming less than 2 weeks after the official March meeting, where the Fed could have raised interest rates, but didn't * Not only did they not raise interest rates, they went out of their way to diminish the markets' expectations of future rate hikes * So that after the March meeting, people who thought the Fed was going to raise rates 3 more times, revised expectations to at most 2, but a lot of people are starting to expect no interest rate hikes at all * It was a very dovish press conference following the release of their statement * So now, a week later some of the same guys on the FOMC saying, "We might raise rates in April" * If you're thinking about raising rates in April, why were you so dovish last week? * And if you are going to raise them in April, why not raise them in March * None of this makes any sense, especially looking at the economic released since the Fed decided not to raise rates in March, and in general, it's been weaker expected * So if the Fed is being given weaker than expected economic news, after they said they wouldn't raise rates, why would they now be raising the spectre of a rate hike coming up next month * Is this some kind of trial balloon? * I think the Fed is losing even more credibility when they're so schizophrenic: they'll raise rates - they're not going to raise rates, they're going to raise rates... * They know the markets will react to everything they say,

* Before I get into the economic news of the past couple of days, the big event today was the terrorist attacks in Belgium and I want to offer my condolences to the people of Belgium and also on behalf of my listeners from the U.S. and all over the wor...

* Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody and to those of you who have been waiting since yesterday for this podcast, you won't be disappointed * Yesterday I did an interview with Liz Claman at Fox Business News and I did respond to the Fed's decision.  That video is up on my YouTube Channel. *  The Fed did not raise interest rates, which didn't surprise a lot of people, but what did surprise a lot of people was the the Fed indicated, based on their Dot Plot, the consensus is that the Fed now sees two rate hikes coming in 2016 * If you recall, at the end of last year and earlier this year, the Fed was still projecting 4 rate hikes in 2016 * What I said from the very beginning is, "No chance." * In fact I still thought it was more likely that we'd get a rate cut * Now it's two down and two to go, because now the Fed is only pretending that they will raise rates twice this year instead of pretending that they're going to raise rates 4 times * What's really interesting now is how the Fed is starting to lose credibility that it never should have had * Steve Liesman asked Janet Yellen a good question: He said, what about your credibility - you said you would raise rates 4 times and now it's 2 times, and you said you were data dependent and unemployment is below 5%, creating 200,000+ jobs per year and the core CPI is up 2.3% * He said, if you're not raising rates now, under what circumstances will you raise rates? * Janet Yellen didn't really answer the question, but I thought she was thinking, "Don't you understand, we never intended to raise rates." * I pointed this out from the beginning: The Federal Reserve never said that they would raise rates 4 times. They said, based on our economic forecasts, this is what we think is going to happen - BUT if we're wrong, it's not going to happen * Janet Yellen said to Steve Liesman, "Look, these dots don't mean anything - this is what we're thinking at a moment in time, but it's not a promise." * For some reason, everybody assumes that if the Fed thinks the economy is going to get better it will get better, in fact, if anything, since the Fed's track record is so horrific, if the Fed thinks the economy is going to get better, it's probably going to get worse, and so they are not going to raise interest rates the way they're pretending * One of the reasons the Fed is pretending that the economy is good is because that's the official line of the Obama Administration: "The economy is good, and if you say it's not good, you're peddling fiction." * Yellen probably wanted to say to Liesman,"Steve, we're not raising rates because the economy is lousy." * The fact that they don't raise rates is the proof that they know that the economy is lousy, but they don't want to say it, so Janet Yellen is saying "Read between the lines" * When I'm listening to all the coverage about the fact that the Fed didn't raise rates, the reports say,"Janet Yellen chickens out", "Janet Yellen gets cold feet" * That's not the point.  Her feet were always cold. The Fed never intended to raise rates. * If they were planning to do it they would have done it * This is all part of the extend and pretend charade * In fact, in my Fox Business News interview with Liz Claman, I was debating Andy Brenner who holds that the Fed will raise rates 2 or 3 times this year * I said, "If the Fed was going to raise rates, they should have raised them yesterday." * Brenner responded that the market wasn't prepared for it * I said the Fed is not supposed to be market dependent, it is supposed to be data dependent * The market may never be prepared to raise rates - look at what happened the last time, the market got off to the worse start in the history of the market * Smarter people realize they're not going to raise rates at all * How could they risk another rate hike given what happened the last time