In his first-ever interview, Tony Deden, chairman of Edelweiss Holdings talks with Grant Williams of Real Vision. Anthony’s focus on scarcity and endurance in his investment portfolio and the stewardship of what he thinks of as irreplaceable capital has led him to reinvent the discipline of value investing.

​Tony’s thoughtful, patient approach to the allocation of his investors’ capital has yielded exceptional returns – and his disciplined investment philosophy offers an eye-opening insight into many of the problems inherent in the modern-day asset management business. 

Subscribe to Real Vision for just $180/year and get a full year of free access to Business Insider Prime (worth $99): https://rvtv.io/2NemPS7 

Following Trump's lead—and Lincoln's.

Many conservatives did not see that Trump had framed the 2016 election as a choice between two mutually exclusive regimes: multiculturalism and America. What I call “multiculturalism” includes “identity politics” and “political correctness.” If multiculturalism continues to worm its way into the public mind, it will ultimately destroy America. Consequently, the election should have been seen as a contest between a woman who, perhaps without quite intending it, was leading a movement to destroy America and a man who wanted to save America. The same contest is being played out in the midterm elections.

​For more of this article, click here.

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Is the return to a gold standard inevitable? 

Grant Williams, Senior Advisor at Vulpes Investment Mgmt, breaks down the history of the gold standard and the impact it will have on the future of world currency. 

 This is a must-watch if you are reviewing your current investment portfolio.

Copyright © 2018 Cambridge House International Inc. All rights reserved.

The latest from Grants Almost Daily…KWM


Now, this is passive. Today, biotech firm MiMedx Group, Inc. announced that its shares will be delisted from the Nasdaq, sending the price lower by 40% and extending the year-to-date loss to 70%. The company last filed financials on Oct. 31, 2017 and announced in June it will need to restate five years of results, and noted today that its efforts will extend beyond the exchange’s Feb. 25, 2019 deadline to remain listed. MiMedx will not appeal Nasdaq’s decision, and will begin trading over-the-counter tomorrow.  
 
The problems at MiMedx are well aired, and include the termination of CEO Parker H. Petite and chief operating officer Bill Taylor for cause this summer, a compensation claw back of four senior executives allegedly involved in misconduct and an ongoing investigation from a number of government agencies including both the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission. The short interest currently stands at a whopping 60% of the float.
 
Not that MiMedx’s largest shareholders even noticed that the company hasn’t filed a 10-Q in more than a year. The top three holders, BlackRock, Inc., State Street Corp. and Vanguard Group, Inc., combine to control more than 28% of shares outstanding according to data from Bloomberg. Those passive behemoths have allocated MiMedx shares across nearly 100 funds ostensibly designed for a wide array of strategies, including the SPDR Portfolio Total Stock Momentum ETF, the iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF, the Vanguard U.S. Factor Value ETF, among many others. 
 
Pre-eminent short seller and vocal MiMedx bear Marc Cohodes tells Grant’s that the presence of those large passive holders who may know little to nothing about the individual stocks they hold can serve to artifically extend the life of such questionable enterprises as MiMedx:
 
The whole problem with indexation is that there are no adults at the switch. The focus of index firms is on advertising and asset gathering, rather than compliance or even simple adult supervision.  This situation would never have gone on so long without the unwitting help of passive investors. 
 
What will become of the MiMedx shares held by those passive funds? A search through the relevant prospectuses yields no mention of procedure when an underlying company faces delisting. Calls to Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street yielded no definitive answers by publication time, beyond a blanket statement from State Street that they “follow the rules as designed” by the relevant index. 
 
Nevertheless, the passive train keeps rolling, as Pension & Investments magazine reports that total worldwide index fund assets under management jumped 13% to $13.37 trillion in the year-ended June 30, while passively managed U.S. equity assets rose by 16%, to $6.42 trillion over the same period. For context, the market capitalization of the Wilshire 5000, which tracks all listed U.S. equities, currently stands at $28.5 trillion according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, while total worldwide equity market capitalization stood at just over $79 trillion at year-end 2017 according to the World Bank. 
 
Advises Cohodes: “People need to know what the hell they’re in.”

Grant’s Interest Rate Observer is an independent, value-oriented and contrary-minded journal of the financial markets. Check out more at https://www.grantspub.com/index.cfm

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.”
​– The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe


The paragraph above captures everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen during this Fourth Turning. It was written over two decades ago, but no one can deny its accuracy regarding our present situation. The spark was a financial crash. The response to the financial crash by the financial and governmental entities, along with their Deep State co-conspirators who created the financial collapse due to their greed and malfeasance, led to the incomprehensible election of Donald Trump, as the deplorables in flyover country evoked revenge upon the corrupt establishment.

​For more of this article, click here.

Regardless of who’s in power, it seems like we’re always being told to spend our savings because it’s good for the economy. They’d have us believe that fiat currency is the key to our seemingly stable financial regime, but skeptical minds question whether we can really trust our leaders to level with us on how the economy’s really doing – and whether our current level of prosperity can be maintained at all.
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Seeking deeper knowledge on these issues, Crush the Street interviewed financial expert and commentator Kevin Massengill, who co-founded the fintech data analytics firm Meraglim. Located on the worldwide web at Meraglim.com, the firm was established by Mr. Massengill with gold guru Jim Rickards.

For the rest of this article, click here.

A long-planned meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese ruler Xi Jinping, scheduled for the sidelines of the G20 meeting at the end of next month in Buenos Aires, looks like it might not occur. And even if the get-together takes place, it does not appear it will be productive. There may even be no discussions on the topic of the moment, the so-called “trade war.”

The U.S. won’t talk to Beijing about trade until the Chinese, in the words of the Wall Street Journal , submit a “concrete proposal to address Washington’s complaints about forced technology transfers and other economic issues.” For many reasons, China’s officials are unlikely to do that.

Call it, as the Wall Street Journal does, an “impasse.”

The Trump administration is quickly reversing four decades of American thinking. Presidents from Nixon to Obama made the success of China’s Communist Party a goal of U.S. policy.

But Trump has not only eliminated that goal—his policies are either hostile to Beijing or indifferent to its interests—he is also disengaging from China altogether. And that is, despite concern, a good thing. Our relations with the Chinese state probably will be better, at least in the long run, with less—not more—contact.

For more of this article, click here.