In Search of the Perfect Investment

I went shopping. Everyone is complaining about exploding prices at our local supermarket and dollar store. Inflation is rearing its ugly head. Which brings me a to a simple idea — a bond fund devoted to owning Federal Government TIPS bonds called TIP. The explanation is simple:

The investment seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Barclays Capital U.S. Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) Index (Series-L). The fund generally invests at least 90% of its assets in the bonds of the underlying index and at least 95% of its assets in U.S. government bonds. The underlying index measures the performance of the inflation-protected public obligations of the U.S. Treasury. Inflation-protected public obligations of the U.S. Treasury, commonly known as TIPS, are securities issued by the U.S. Treasury that are designed to provide inflation protection to investors.

Even better, the fund is yielding 4.25%. Its performance over the past five years has been good.

It’s performance this year has not been bad.

More information on the fund, including its top ten holdings: click here.

Another view on inflation: Now we are seven billion. From the latest Economist:

IN 1980 Julian Simon, an economist, and Paul Ehrlich, a biologist, made a bet. Mr Ehrlich, author of a bestselling book, called “The Population Bomb”, picked five metals-copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten-and said their prices would rise in real terms over the following ten years. Mr Simon bet that prices would fall. The wager symbolised the dispute between Malthusians who thought a rising population would create an age of scarcity (and high prices) and those “Cornucopians”, such as Mr Simon, who thought markets would ensure plenty.

Mr Simon won easily. Prices of all five metals fell in real terms. As the world economy boomed and population growth began to ebb in the 1990s, Malthusian pessimism retreated.

It is returning. On October 31st the UN will dub a newborn the world’s 7 billionth living person. The 6 billionth, Adnan Nevic, born in October 1999, will be only two weeks past his 12th birthday. If Messrs Simon and Ehrlich had ended their bet today, instead of in 1990, Mr Ehrlich would have won. What with high food prices, environmental degradation and faltering green policies, people are again worrying that the world is overcrowded. Some want restrictions to cut population growth and forestall ecological catastrophe. Are they right?

Two points:

+ Food prices are definitely rising. Inflation is returning. Good for TIPS bonds.

+ Some metals  are high. But I’m not betting on them staying higher. I’m also not betting on miners. A wise old miner once explained to me that when metal prices go up, miners open more mines. When they go down, they close (a.k.a. mouthball) the mines. When I look at the past 20 years in Australia, I see new mines being opened at breakneck speed — all to largely accommodate China’s growth.

The 84th bank failure this year. Community Banks of Colorado, a 40-branch bank based in Greenwood, Colo., was closed Friday by the FDIC.  Bank Midwest of Kansas City, Mo., will assume all of the deposits and purchase the assets of the dead bank.  Banks of Colorado had about $1.33 billion in total deposits and $1.38 billion in assets as of June 30. The cost to the deposit-insurance fund will be $224.9 million — 16% of total assets. It’s the 84th U.S. bank failure and the sixth in Colorado so far this year.

It’s not getting better.

Don’t bother locking your luggage. It’s too easy to open the zipper. Click here

Cheapest neat pen. The BIG Cristal 1.6 mm.

Click here.

Kadafi’s gigantic nestegg. Moammar Kadafi secretly salted away more than $200 billion in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world before he was killed, about $30,000 for every Libyan citizen and double the amount that Western governments previously had suspected.

Revelation of the stunning size of the portfolio may stir anger among Libya’s 6.5 million people — about one-third of whom live in poverty.

For the full Washington Post story, click here.

Favorite recent New Yorker cartoons:

Harry Newton who worries about Europe.  Delaying a solution is making things worse. Battered by endless strikes, the Greek economy is in free-fall. ASe days go on, it needs more and more bailout monies — if the Euro is to be saved. But couldn’t we let Greece leave the Euro and return to the Drachma. Yes, but that means French banks, stuffed with semi-worthless Greek sovereign debt, would now be in big trouble. Too big to fail. But one Euro country, like France, can’t easily print Euros, like we can print dollars.

The weekend brought endless rumors of dropping world currencies — from the dollar to the Euro to the Yen to the Swiss Franc. But they can’t all go down together. They have to go down against a currency that rises. But which one? This stuff is confusing and depressing — a bad combination for equity investors.

Of note: The Indian Rupee was very volatile during the September quarter. It depreciated significantly to end at 49.49 per US dollar, declining about 11% during the quarter. That made Indian products cheaper, but lost money for investors in Indian firms. There is now discussion that debt could derail China’s boom, which could not be good for the Aussie dollar. The issue dwarfing all others in the euro crisis is how to save Italy, according to reports I received this moning.

As I said — confusing and depressing.