The markets have been all over the place, and investing in this environment—or in any environment—can seem intimidating. It doesn't have to be. Investor and precious metals expert Bob Moriarty, founder of 321 Gold, is such a risk taker and a rebel that he once flew his aircraft under the Eiffel Tower. The rebel side comes out in his contrarian approach to investing that has brought him a lot of success. David H. Smith, senior analyst for The Morgan Report, discusses the value of Bob Moriarty's practical, straightforward information on how to invest.

"Investors have come to believe that they need to find a guru, a financial advisor, or to read articles about certain theories of investing if they are to become rich from their investments. Those notions are all wrong. There are no gurus. Financial advisors advise because they have to earn a living. If they were experts on investing, they wouldn't need to be selling their services. The different theories about investing mostly remain interesting theories.

If you have good sense, keep an open mind and learn the basics, you don't need all the fluff. In short, there are no experts. Nobody knows anything.

I was chatting with a friend of mine about investing, trying to make the point that we make things way too complicated. It's easier to profit if we skip a lot of the nonsense associated with investing and go directly to the core. Investing for profit isn't as difficult as the so-called gurus would have us believe, but like a contractor building a house, we have to start with a proper foundation.

I've run a successful financial website for fifteen years at 321gold.com. It started out as a way to pass on information about concepts and companies I was familiar with to friends and family, and it grew. And grew. From the beginning I was determined to cut out as much as possible of the voodoo and hocus pocus from the pieces we published, so we could attract serious investors.

As I was saying to my friend, some of the most basic bits of background in investing are missing from most investment books. The authors tend to write about their personal agendas without ever providing some of the most essential building blocks that every investor needs to know.

I've made money and I've lost money. I have made some brilliant and timely calls, and I've made enough boneheaded calls, and in public, that it's obvious I'm not a crook or a shill.

If you are going to be a successful carpenter, someone needs to teach you how to buy and hold a hammer in the correct way so your nails go in straight. If you are going to be a successful investor you need to know some of the basics about investments that are rarely found in books. We learn them through trial and error, and that makes for both bad carpentry and poor investing."

So begins veteran investor Bob Moriarty, the founder of 321 Gold, in his book,Nobody Knows Anything.

Investing is a battlefield. If you plan to emerge a winner, then it's time to fully accept this fact and arm yourself with the proper weapons—internal and external—before placing your hard-earned cash on the line. Investing success rests upon understanding and following a select set of critical behaviors that can protect and enrich you through bull and bear runs alike.

Here are four examples of advice that Bob Moriarty has given over the years:

This is an abridged version of our Daily Report.

Lack of risk appetite

Discretionary stocks are at a multi-month low relative to defensive Staples.

That sign of risk-off behavior is unusual with the S&P near a high but has not been a good excuse to sell stocks.

Another trend ended

The small-cap Russell 2000 ended a long streak above its 50-day average. When recently setting a new high, the ends of similar streaks led to more weakness for small-cap stocks in particular, not necessarily the broader market.

Mass exodus

Investors have pulled more than $40 billion from equity funds in 8 weeks. That’s the most since 2016 and ranks near other extremes in the past 15 years.

The latest Commitments of Traders report was released, covering positions through Tuesday

The 3-Year Min/Max Screen shows basically the same extremes as last week, as “smart money” hedgers continue to build on multi-year or record long positions in coffee and the Swiss franc.

Google is trying to make history again, this time with a massive subsea cable project that would be the first one traversing the Atlantic and not solely owned by a telecommunications company.... CLICK for the complete article

The $NDX keeps moving from new highs to new highs driven by a narrow group of stocks. Nothing new about that as this trend has been ongoing for some time and headlines of new record prices for such stocks such as $FB, $AMZN, $GOOGL, $MSFT are now a daily occurrence. The untouchables. Jeff Bezos is worth $140B, no that was so last week, now he’s worth $150B.

How do you quantify risk in a market that prices in no risk?

While most people are focused on stocks prices one underlying issue that appears to be largely ignored by participants is the unprecedented market capitalization expansion we are witnessing in these few select stocks.

The numbers are simply staggering. Magic money out of thin air.

$FB, $GOOGL, $AMZN, $MSFT and $AAPL. These 5 stocks now worth nearly $4.1 trillion. That makes these 5 companies the 4th largest economy of the world if you use GDP as a reference. Not bad for less than a million people employed at these 5 companies.

Now check this out: Their combined market cap increase? $260,000,000,000. That’s $260B. In just the past ELEVEN trading DAYS!

No seriously:

Oh it gets better.

2018 year to date? EIGHT HUNDRED TWELVE BILLION DOLLARS market cap expansion in just 6.5 months. $812,000,000,000. That’s a company the size of a $MSFT or $GOOGL in its own right.

Commodities, including gold and silver, have plunged to become so deeply oversold that a snapback rally looks likely soon, that could be sharp as if they turn up here it will trigger a wave of short covering. Such a rally is likely to be sparked by a dollar reaction, as we will see, but it is likely to be followed by further heavy losses across the sector if a general market crash ensues as expected. 

We will start by looking at the latest dollar index chart, as a dollar reaction here will be what ignites a commodity rally. The 2-year chart for the dollar index shows that the dollar is rounding over beneath a zone of resistance that dates back to a reversal that occurred at this level last October and November. The pattern that has formed from last July looks like a large Head-and-Shoulders bottom with the Right Shoulder of the pattern about to form. If this is what it is, it implies that the dollar will in due course go considerably higher to the 102 – 104 area, which we can expect to happen during the market crash phase, but first there is the little matter of the Right Shoulder forming to balance the pattern, and if a more or less symmetrical Right Shoulder forms then we are looking at the dollar dropping to the 91 – 92 zone over the near-term, which will be sufficient to generate a significant snapback rally in commodities, that, as mentioned above, is likely to be magnified by short covering. That is the theory that I have and which is mine and what it is too. 

So now let’s proceed to review the charts of a range of important commodities – copper, gold, silver, and platinum and their respective COT charts, which will give us more of an idea regarding how likely it is that they will soon rally. 1-year charts are selected to enable us to relate them directly to the COT charts which are also for 1-year. Starting with gold we see that it has accelerated into a deeply oversold state on its MACD indicator and relative to its moving averages, with the drop from its April peak clipping $150 off its price at its April peak. Clearly gold didn’t take kindly to the dollar’s latest rally. Gold’s accumulation line has held up well, however, which increases the chances of a snapback rally imminently, which will be augmented by sudden short covering as mentioned above.