A Case of Whiplash

I am in Las Vegas today, and over the next couple of days, I will be delivering talks on how I trade in the markets using both stocks and options. The event here is the TradersEXPO, and what happens here definitely will NOT stay in Vegas.

You see, unlike the most familiar cliché regarding the ongoings in Sin City, “What happen in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” I know that the investors I’ve spoken with here are going to take the knowledge they’ve acquired, go home and implement winning trading strategies. And at this stage of the market, nimble trading strategies, along with bedrock, tried-and-true long-term investing strategies of the kind we employ in this service, are more important now than ever — especially given the current market whiplash.

I mean, just this week we saw war break out in Eastern Europe, and we witnessed big selling on that news on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then, on Thursday, stocks plunged at the open until traders began to go bargain shopping at about midday. That led to a big rally into the close, and a subsequent bigger rally through midday on Friday.

The chart of the major domestic averages over the past five trading sessions tells the whiplash story better than any description I can offer.

Now, last week we recommended you add the VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) to your Tactical Trends Portfolio (TTP), as gold was the dual beneficiary of rising inflation and safe-haven money flows due to the situation in Ukraine.

GDX holds the biggest and arguably best gold and precious metals mining stocks. The fund’s top holdings include Newmont Corp, Barrick Gold Corp, Franco-Nevada Corp, Wheaton Precious Metals and Newcrest Mining Ltd.

If you haven’t yet added GDX, I recommend doing so now, as the fund is just slightly below last week’s buy price as of this writing.

Finally, I have written quite a bit about the situation between Russia and Ukraine this week, including the main story in my e-letter, The Deep Woods. I recommend checking that article out for greater context on the situation, as well as on the potential investment opportunities that could arise from the bellicosity of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Yet, before I close out the week, I wanted to say that my sentiment, and I hope most of the world’s sentiment, is with the Ukrainian people and the tyranny they’re staring at going forward. Here, in real time, we are witnessing a disgraceful violation of human rights perpetrated by a criminal regime headed by the worst kind of thuggish world actor.

The great conservative forefather Edmund Burke is purported to have once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Well, the world is about to see what happens when good men of the West basically do nothing.