Brave New World

Many investors/traders haven’t been here before. They weren’t aware or old enough in the 1970’s to remember the last time the inflation cycle kicked into gear. While I wasn’t old enough to be trading or investing in the 70s, I do remember the how everyone it seemed was interested in owning gold as the decade came to an end. Gold on the April delivery futures contract spiked to $890 an ounce on the 21st of Jan. 1980 and hasn’t seen those highs since. Until Jan. of this year, that is. Then, just last week gold closed over $1000 for the first time ever. So how high could it go? Well, for some perspective, adjusted for inflation, gold would have to rise to $2,239.67 just to get back to the 1980 high. And those figures are if you believe the official CPI numbers. I’m a skeptic.

So, to take advantage of the opportunity I’m in the process of opening a Friends & Family Advisor account with Interactive Brokers (IB), the absolutely best (in my opinion) brokerage there is. IB calls itself a brokerage for professionals and their trading commissions are rock bottom. For instance, to trade 100 shares of stock at Bank of America, they charge customers $14, Charles Schwab $12.95, Ameritrade $9.99, Fidelity $8. Interactive Brokerage charges $1. That is money you get to keep. For active traders like me it really adds up to big savings. Another IB advantage is the interest they pay you. For margin accounts they pay you every singly day. So even if you aren’t an active trader, you’ll see your account grow nicely. If you trade very much at all, it’s a huge savings. IB has also been around over thirty (30) years, and they’re safe. They didn’t invest in the same subprime derivatives many Wall Street firms did, and are having to get bailed out because of.

What is a Friends & Family Advisor account? It’s an account that allows me to trade for my own accounts (individual brokerage, regular IRA, Roth IRA) as well as friends and family’s accounts in one location and even one transaction and have the profits prorated to client’s accounts. The setup is very convenient, very slick, and very profitable, if my trading continues to be as successful as it has been in the last few months. And did I mention IB offers trading in futures. What a product.
Several months ago I told a client that I’d like to be able to REALLY profit when I trade well. I felt I was really trading stocks well but the profit just wasn’t that great. Since then I’ve switched my focus to futures trading and it is paying off. Although I’ve traded futures in silver, copper, palladium, platinum, crude oil, natural gas and heating oil, my main focus has been gold. Since refunding my account on November 29th of last year, my account is up 203.26%.