First things first: Click here to access “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” a brilliant, must-read essay from Pimco’s Bill Gross. Here’s a guy who knows just about all there is to know about investment assets, especially fixed-incomes, yet even he and the whizzes who work for him evidently are hard pressed to forecast returns in a bubble-driven financial universe.

Gross categorically refutes all notions that the world’s stock markets are being pushed skyward by forces other than limitless financial liquidity. An important source of fuel is the U.S. trade deficit, which is effectively being monetized and leveraged by financial players around the globe. This essay is the best in-your-face analysis I have seen concerning the reasons for the global asset bubble, and it should cause embarrassment to such shameless buy-side hucksters as Larry Kudlow, and to all of the think-tank bozos and "economists" who insist the U.S. and global economies are quite healthy.

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Q&A  at GoldSeek

I’ll be conducting an open Q&A forum at GoldSeek.com this Thursday at noon EST, the second such session in a continuing series.  During the first half of the planned hour-long session I will answer questions about stocks, indexes, options and commodities that you have e-mailed me in advance. You can do so by clicking here or by pointing your browser to the following URL: http://www.goldseek.com/chat.php. To actually enter the chat room for the real-time Q&A that will follow, you should pre-register by clicking here or by pointing your browser to this URL: http://www.goldseek.com/chat/.

Readers might also be interested to know that my daily essays on a wide variety of topics will continue to be available at GoldSeek and other sites frequented by traders and investors. With respect to one singularly important topic in particular – deflation – I aim to provide, as always, some of the most provocative and illuminating commentary you will find on the web.

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Seminars in Atlanta and Boca Raton

I’ve received numerous requests to offer Hidden Pivot seminars in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boca Raton, Florida. I will do so if there is sufficient demand, so please let me know if you would be seriously interested in attending in either place.  The two-day class would probably be held sometime in the spring of 2007. Contact me via e-mail, including your contact information and choice of locales. The cost would be $1,500 USD.