What is the most valuable commodity?

Oh Dear! This one used to be easy. Gold was it... Keyword there being "was." Gold "was" a good hedge against inflation. Gold "was" very liquid. You could exchange it easily for a stable cash price at any time, and the price seemed to only go up. Now that is a tough one. The recent counterfeit gold scandal where tungsten clad in gold was being passed off for cold coins and ingots has sullied the once "Golden" reputation of gold. GLD the SPDR Gold Trust ETF tanked -26.25% this last year to date.

Bitcoins and other crypto-currencies have had their day as being called Gold 2.0... A gold-like unique identifier that couldn't be counterfeited. However CEX.io and Ghash.io, the Ukrainian Bitcoin exchange and mining consortium respectively, got dangerously close to holding over 50% of the Bitcoins in existence, thereby making it possible for them to use their majority position to enable a double spending scam. This has added to the volatility of the bitcoin price from day to day. Bitcoin has gone from nothing to everything and may be headed back to nothing. Who knows where that Winklevoss Twins ETF is?

Ca$h is a disaster waiting to happen. While most of the newly "minted" stuff from the Federal Reserve and other affiliated National Central Banks is tied up in mortgages and retirement liability books, there is a huge wave of retirees about to hit the system and start spending it. All that Quantitative Easing is about to come home to roost.

Consumer staples may be a candidate. FXG, a consumer staples ETF, has gone from 26.1 to 35.86 at the moment over the last 365 days. Have to check the management fees on that. That's 36.51%, beating the SPX which did 24.9% over the same period. FXD which is consumer staples discretionary did 34.65%. Plot these over two years though and it hasn't always been that rosey. XLP Consumer Staples Index did 17.26% and it has options on it, so not as well, but it still went up in dollar value. Everybody has been telling us Equities, but FXG and FXD are telling us that they OD'd on Horse Cookies.

They say Bonds, short term and corporate, are an opportunity but that ship may have sailed too. This is the stuff of RRIF's and such, managed heavily. 10-12% regular yield is a good RRIF, but some of them can lose. Nothing is that sure of a thing.


The Boss may be a dreamboat, but he's older than dirt, likes Jack Daniel's, pricey Tequila, Chinese Guitars, Smoking, and Classic Hard Rock that all his elders hated. Big Red Flags and a recipe for disaster there. He's like XIV crossed with a UVXY short though... A damn rough ride, but you know it's going up in the long run. Which reminds me, they say the only sure thing are death and taxes... How about alcohol, tobacco, and firearms with a fitness, health, and wellness hedge?

At least he is aware of all this stuff,  he is doing something about it, and it kinda works. Caveat Emptor though. He may drive his cube van off a cliff in reverse yet! Oh my! What will I do then? I am a disaster in the kitchen, and I swear my derriere has grown a bit even while thinking about this! Sob!