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June
15
2019

The Man Who Bet $100,000 on Bill’s Trade of a Lifetime
 Tom Dyson

A Note From Bill: Longtime readers of our newsletters may know the name Tom Dyson. Years ago, when these correspondences were called The Daily Reckoning, Tom wrote to us. He said he enjoyed our work and offered to work for us for free. We hired him, with pay, shortly after.

Over the years, Tom proved to be a gifted writer with an eye for spotting profitable opportunities. Recently, we shared our Dow-to-Gold trading model with him. He was so convinced by the model, he went “all in” on the trade.

Below, Tom shares some insights on the Dow-to-Gold trade, and shows why he believes it could be the secret to securing intergenerational wealth. Read on…

“The financial world is either risk-on or risk-off… It’s a world that is either expanding with win-win deals or contracting… civilizing… or decivilizing.

“It is either making progress… or it has gotten too far ahead of itself and is backtracking,” says Bill.

And as Bill has been showing, the most important trend in finance is, of course, the decline in the Dow-to-Gold ratio.

Having peaked in 1999 at 41, it began its long walk “home” – to where it always ends up: below 4.

Let’s call this the “primary trend.” But it got waylaid en route, and it’s spent the last eight years backtracking.

Bill has been waiting eight years for this trend to change. Eight long years… of fake money and rising stocks.

And now, finally, this most important trend in finance is “back on.”

To my mind – and for my money – it’s presenting the biggest opportunity to profit since, well… I found bitcoin in 2013.

It’s “go” time. This is it.

Recent Reversal

Recall that Bill’s Dow-to-Gold trade is based on a simple premise: You buy stocks when they are cheap relative to gold (when the Dow-to-Gold ratio is below five). Then, you sell stocks when they become expensive (when the Dow-to-gold ratio hits 15) and return to gold.

Over the course of the last 100 years, you would have made only six trades. But you would have also handily beaten a “buy-and-hold” approach.

This chart shows it all. The towering peak in 1999. The countertrend rally from 2011 to 2018. And if you look very carefully, a recent reversal.

I interpret this recent reversal as the Dow-to-Gold primary trend reasserting itself, getting back on track, and once again marching back down towards single digits.

This next chart shows the zoom-in of the last two decades or so. The ratio topped out at 22.36 in September 2018. As I write, it’s at 19.5, and, I speculate, about to head much lower.

I’m expressing this trade by buying a basket of various gold investments and selling stocks short in an equal amount.

Of course, if I’m wrong and the Dow-to-Gold ratio isn’t ready to resume its primary trend lower, the market will let us know – by making a new high, and rising above 22.36.

But I’m willing to bet that’s not going to happen.

The Dow-to-Gold ratio likes to move in big, clear trends. And once it’s in motion, it tends to stay in motion.

This is a perfect speculation. And I’ve put some of my own money behind this…

If we’re wrong, we stand to lose a little with our clearly defined stop loss. If we’re right, we make a killing.

“Buried” Gold

It all started a few years ago. I was in Rwanda when I received a buyout from my previous employer.

First, I put 90% of my buyout fee into gold coins. I got a fantastic deal from leading coin merchant Van Simmons on beautiful, rare, pre-1933 coins trading for bullion prices. Cheaper-than-bullion prices, in fact. And I “buried” them…

And they will remain “buried” until the Dow-to-Gold ratio breaches 5 – which I expect to happen sometime in the next decade.

I took the remaining 10% of my buyout fee and bet it on the Dow-to-Gold ratio falling. Here’s how this works:

The Dow-to-Gold ratio is currently at 19.5. If it rises to 22.36 or above, I lose the bet. $100,000 gone.

But if it falls, I win as follows:

• If the Dow-to-Gold ratio falls to 18, I win $100,000.

• If the Dow-to-Gold ratio falls to 16, I win $200,000.

• If the Dow-to-Gold ratio falls to 14, I win $300,000.

• And if the Dow-to-Gold ratio falls to 10, my “take-profit,” I win $500,000 and close the bet.

And so you see, I’ve got a very simple binary bet here. If I’m wrong and September 2018 was not the start of a return to the primary trend lower, I lose $100,000.

But if I’m right and September 2018 marked the Dow-to-Gold ratio resuming its primary trend, I stand to win up to $500,000.

If the Dow-to-Gold ratio rises above 22.36, I’m out…

But as Bill’s coauthor on The Bonner-Denning Letter, Dan Denning, said to me recently, “This baby’s goin’ down!”

I have total conviction in this idea. It’s almost entirely inspired by Bill’s work. But it is a trade that will play out over several years.

So what am I doing in the meantime?

Seven-Month Trip

“Daddy, we don’t want to go to India,” said the kids at breakfast recently.

My family and I had a tough time in India last time. First, my daughter fell off a bunk bed in Udaipur and smashed her head so hard, she got a serious concussion. (We had our first experience of an Indian hospital.)

Then, the kids got ill and lost a terrifying amount of weight. And in the middle of all the diarrhea, vomiting, and fevers, we got the call that my mother was dying, and we had to urgently make a long journey to London.

The final straw was on our last night in India. We got eaten alive by bed bugs. And they infested our luggage – we had to throw it all away.

Very stressful times. But we overcame them. And now, we’re going back for more!

In the next seven months, we’re going to travel around the world… to India… Southeast Asia… China… Japan… Canada… and back to London.

In the meantime, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the Dow-to-Gold ratio, waiting for the primary trend to play out.

That’s right. Our strategy is simple. We sold all our stuff (except my golf clubs; they’re in a small storage locker in South Florida), converted our assets to gold, “buried” it in various spots around America, warned our friends and family about the danger, and got out of Dodge with our three kids and one suitcase in tow.

We travel very light. This is all the stuff I’m taking for a seven-month trip around the world.

Tom packs light for his seven-month trip

The two most common questions people ask us about our trip are: “How are you financing it?” and “What do you do about school?”

We’re financing the trip with money we’ve saved, stretching our money by going to cheap countries. We only spend a few hundred bucks a week.

And we do school with the kids six days a week from 8 a.m.-midday. No exceptions. Even when we’re travelling. With all the chaos around us, this daily routine keeps everyone sane.

Being able to whisk my family away on this trip of a lifetime is such a gift and I want to cherish every moment.

And so, I’ve switched my phone off – that tyrant that sucks so much of my attention. And when I write, I write by hand.

And speaking of writing, I will be writing you more in the weeks ahead. So look out for my “postcards from the fringe.”

There, I’ll give you updates on my travels, on the Dow-to-Gold ratio, and on the progress of our trade of a lifetime.

Are we crazy? We’ll see…

For now, greetings from India. We’ll speak again soon.

Tom Dyson and family in India

Regards,

Tom Dyson

Editor’s Note: As Tom put it, he’s “all in” on Bills Dow-to-Gold trade. Here at the Diary, we’ll keep you up to date on the progress of the trade and share some insights from Tom as he travels the globe, family in tow. So keep a sharp eye out for more “postcards from the fringe.”

Tom Dyson is a contributing editor, with Dr. Steve Sjuggerud, of DailyWealth. There's not another financial writer with a more proven contrarian view. Tom made his first trade age 12. The stock returned 300% in less than 9 months. Since then, Tom has worked on a bond trading desk at Salomon brothers, qualified to the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants - the UK equivalent of CMA in the US - and ridden freight trains all over North America.

In his spare time, Tom likes to speculate in the capital markets, gamble on the golf course and play poker against his colleagues. He graduated from the University of Nottingham with a degree in Spanish. Tom's articles have appeared in the Daily Reckoning, the largest e-letter in America, and many other well-known contrarian websites.

 

 

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