HardAssetsInvestor

Mike Norman, Hard Assets Investor (Norman): Hello everybody. Welcome to HardAssetsInvestor.com. I'm Mike Norman, your host. My guest today is Sean Hyman, editor of the Ultimate Wealth Report. Sean, thanks very much for coming on the show.

Sean Hyman, editor, Ultimate Wealth Report, (Hyman): Glad to be here.

Norman: Now, you focus a lot on commodities and currencies. I want to get your commodity outlook. I think you're quite bullish right now, which is a bit of a contrast to many of the recent guests I've had on, who have sort of pulled back in their enthusiasm for commodities. And we have seen at least some of the commodity sector stall out. But you remain very bullish, right?

Hyman: I am bullish. There are a lot of commodity bears out there right now. And they’ve been right to be so in the months past. But I believe right now we’re at a phase where commodities are bottoming out. Of course, some have been soaring recently—grains and the like.

Norman: Right. That’s weather related.

Hyman: But yes, I think that you're seeing a lot broad-based … like the CRB Index, I believe, has bottomed out, and will head much higher from here. It’s consolidating right below a major moving average, and about to head higher. I believe gold, silver … some of these are going to head higher. I believe copper has stabilized. Steel has stabilized. And so I believe you will see an uptick in GDP and some macro numbers in some coming quarters, based on the stability that we’re starting to see in commodities, because I believe demand is coming back into commodities at this given time.

Norman: OK. So that’s kind of a contrarian call, the uptick in GDP. Does that mean globally, or in the United States? I would assume globally …

Hyman: I think both. I don’t think we’re going to hit some massive global burst. But I do think that we’ll have mini rallies and mini pullbacks, and so mini recessions and mini boosts to the economy. And I believe right now we’re on one of those mini boosts to the economy that’s going to happen.

I think the U.S. economy and some parts of the globe will probably be a little bit in limbo for about the next four to eight years. But I do believe we are up on one of those commodity bursts right now, stimulated by some global demand.

Norman: So you see this more as a secular, long-term bull run. If you look at commodities, the pattern has been—and this goes back well over 100 years—that you get these sort of cyclical “bursts,” using your term that we’ve seen. But then, prices tend to come back down towards an equilibrium level. But the recent trend in commodities, in the past seven or eight years, looks more like a sustained trend. That’s what you are saying, right?

Hyman: To me it is. When you have pullbacks like you’ve had over the last couple years in commodities, honestly, to me that’s healthy, because it allows the market to consolidate, take a breather, and then get ready to launch higher, rather than to get on some parabolic move that’s just simply unsustainable and would tend to crash out.

So to me, the pullback we’ve seen over the last year or two has actually been very healthy. And I think that we’re going to see a next up-move very, very shortly. Some of it’s already started even now.