A Personal Message From Adrian Van Eck:
You know me. And you know my son Jonathan Van Eck. You know him as the long-time Editor of our Precious Metals Hotlines.
Today I am going to divulge what has long been a family and company secret. For more than 10 years now Jonathan has also been editing our weekly hotlines on Stock and Bond.
In the beginning I kept his light quietly tucked under a bushel.
Writing about the stock market is very tricky. It may be the most difficult aspect the entire investment advisory community. I wanted to give him a chance to show what he could do.
I have seen in my career many big name writers on finance try writing about stocks and fail on Wall Street.
But I now want
to reveal two things:
FIRST, Jonathan is gifted in having developed a “feel” for the WHOLE Market. A sixth-sense that trumps all the lines the technicians draw on their charts and even beating those market-timers who rely only on fundamentals.
The second thing
I want to share with you, and this gives me an enormous sense of pride, is that Jonathan is now far better as a stock market analyst than I ever was.
So I have decided the time has come to lift the bushel off his talents and LET HIS POWERFUL LIGHT SHINE FORTH!
I am now inviting you to sign up for and enjoy the same stock market E-mail Hotline that I rely on myself for guidance.
More about our Tillman
Stock and Bond hotline:
We began publishing the “Tillman Stock and Bond Hotline” during the early
1990's - to stay in touch
with subscribers weekly.
Jonathan Van Eck took over this hotline in April 1994 - on an
apprentice basis. At first, every theme and decision had to be
approved by Adrian. In the months that followed, Jonathan
showed that he was developing an intuitive feeling for major
moves/trends in the stock market. After a couple of years,
his Father, Adrian Eck, cut him loose and now Adrian has
come to rely on Jonathan’s writings on the stock market.
Over the years, the “Tillman Stock and Bond Hotline” has
put together a great record of anticipating major trends in
the stock market and positioning subscribers to benefit from
those trends.
Back in late 1994, Wall Street had soured on stocks. Many
analysts and investors were expecting stocks to remain low for
years to come. We put an all-out buy on stocks in November.
1994 - right before the Dow exploded above the 4000 level.
In the years that followed, the “Tillman Stock and Bond Hotline”
guided subscribers through several volatile periods. However, it
wasn’t until late 1999 that we locked up most of our bull market
profits and moved a lot of cash to the sidelines. That sell advice
was especially focused on tech stocks.
The stock market bubble of 1999-2000 provided us with perhaps
our biggest challenge in the fifteen years we have been publishing
the "Tillman Stock and Bond Hotline". During late 1999, all of our indicators (and instincts) told us that stocks were too high and that
the marketplace would eventually crush greedy investors and
analysts that refused to take profits and move out of stocks while
the “bubble environment” remained in place.
We told subscribers to sell all of their
technology stocks and we raised a lot of
cash in the broader stock market as well.
That advice was greeted with skepticism by some of our
subscribers - even some of the ones that had been with us
for years. As the stock market bubble went on to its final
extremes during the three to six months following our sell
advice, we lost a few subscribers. Some of them said that
we had failed to understand the “new paradigm” in the
financial markets.
As it turned out, our sell advice from late 1999 was more than
vindicated. The stock market bubble collapsed and our subscribers accomplished one of the most important feats that can happen
during a bear market - they survived with their assets still intact.
For the most part, we protected that cash for two years. Only
after the stock market suffered a hit from the September 11, 2001
attacks did we put a chunk of that cash back into the market.
However, the broad-based recovery rally in stocks during late
2001 and early 2002 got ahead of itself.
We decided to take decisive action. We issued a sell signal
for stocks in March 2002 - within days before an important top
in the major indices.
The Iraq War created a lot of volatility in the financial markets.
Back in late 2002, we predicted that the bear market cycle in
U.S. stocks would come to an end during the spring of 2003.
As it turned out,
our analysis was
right on the money.
However, the risks involved with the Iraq War kept us from
putting our cash back into the stock market until July 2003.
Unlike many of our peers on Wall Street, we refused to risk our
cash at a time when no one really knew what kind of defense
Saddam Hussein and his forces would put up against the U.S.
and its allies.
Even if chemical weapons were not an option for the Iraqi forces,
they certainly could have wreaked havoc in the global financial
markets if they had destroyed large chunks of Iraq's oil industry
infrastructure. We waited for things to settle down in Iraq and
then we went ahead with a series of buy signals for U.S. stocks.
We fed nearly all of our available cash back into the stock market
during 2003 - spreading the buying out over the July to December
period. While some of the best-known names in the Financial
Establishment have been celebrating the fact that they were
bullish on stocks at the October 2002/March 2003 double bottom,
many of them would like to forget that they were also bullish
during the entire bear market and crash of 2000 to 2003.
We might have missed out on some of the early recovery gains
in the burgeoning bull market in stocks, but...
...our overall performance
for more than a decade
has out-paced just about everybody else in the
investment community.
Our focus on the underlying macro trends has served
our subscribers well.
Some of the biggest names in the financial newsletter business
have remained stubbornly bearish toward stocks during the entire
bull market to date (2003-2007). They like to think that they are
smarter than Wall Street and that all of their experience has
given them special insight into the broad problems facing the U.S.
and the world these days. As a result, they have sat out the bull
cycle in stocks and all the while have kept up a stead drumbeat of skepticism. They have been wrong, but they still think they
made the right decision.
For our part, we are only interested in results. In every Hotline,
we follow the movements, trends and technical levels of the
Dow Industrials, S&P 500, Dow Transports, Nasdaq,
Russell 2000 and the Wilshire 5000 Composite Index.
Those five stock indices have gained an average of 58.5% since
we began putting our cash back into the stock market
on July 7, 2003. It is hard to argue with those kinds of results.
By focusing on the big picture and the broad trends of the
markets, we have been able to put together a track record
that would stand up against anyone in the business. Many of
our subscribers have come to appreciate our ability to forecast
trends and then get on the right side of those trends.
While we don’t recommend specific stocks in our Hotline,
we do help subscribers to stay in the market during times of
strength and out of the market during major corrections
and bear cycles.
Over the years, we have built up
a solid core of subscribers to the
“Tillman Stock and Bond Hotline”.
Many of them have said that they treat our Hotline as a kind of
safety net for their own invest strategy. As stocks have gained
ground during the past three to four years, our subscribers have
been faced with waves of negative rhetoric in the financial media
and from many of their friends, family and colleagues.
As long as we have remained bullish, they have been able to
relax and feel confident in their own bullish investment positions.
It works the same way during corrections and bear markets.
Back in late 1999 and early 2000, as Wall Street was pumping up
the stock market, we were quietly waiting on the sidelines.
Our subscribers heard a lot of bullish talk from the same old
sources (the media, friends, family and colleagues). It was hard
to find a Bear back then.
Our sell signal in late 1999 helped
our subscribers to get off that rocket ship
before it ran out of fuel and crashed
to the ground. Since we bought into
the bull market early, we were in
a great position to take some profits
before stocks finally topped out
in early 2000.
Looking to the year ahead, we expect to face many challenges
from the economy and stock market. However, our basic feeling
is that the stock market is going to move significantly higher
during the next ten to fifteen years. Beginning last year, we set
a long term target of Dow 40,000 by the year 2020. Along the
way, there will be plenty of volatility. There might even be
a few recessions and bear markets thrown into the mix.
We do bonds too:
We put a near-term sell rating on bonds a while back when the yield on
the ten year bond was near 4.20%.
Here is a bit of copy from a recent Hotline:
"In midday trading today, the ten-year bond yield was at 4.65%,
up from 4.61% on March 23. Market rates may have seen their
lows for the year.
However, we don’t expect them to move high enough to
endanger the ongoing growth in the economy, the bull market in
stocks or the bottoming in the U.S. housing sector. "
AS YOU KNOW, BOND YIELDS MOVE IN THE
OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM BOND PRICES.
SO BY GETTING OUR READERS OUT EARLY,
WE SAVED THEM FROM SERIOUS LOSSES
IN 10-YEAR BONDS!"
We are looking forward to helping our subscribers navigate
their way through whatever lies ahead. We believe you will
want to join them and take advantage of our special talents
in timing your stock and bond purchases and sales.
Sign up today!
Adrian Van Eck
