As most readers know, Doug Casey's most notable characteristic as an investor is his highly successful contrarian nature. It's how he bagged some of his biggest wins—not just doubles and triples, but 10- and 20-fold returns.
There's only one way to realize these kinds of gains: You must buy when the asset is out of favor. Buying an investment that has already run up is at best chasing momentum and at worst a portfolio wrecker.
So, what's the greatest contrarian investment today? Consider this pictorial data…
At the end of 2013, the sector with the highest level of pessimism, as measured by SentimenTrader, was the gold industry. It actually registered "zero" in mid-December.
Meanwhile, price-to-earnings ratios of the 15 largest gold producers are at their lowest level in 14 years, and less than half what they were when the bull market got under way in 2001.
The ratio of gold to the S&P 500 Index is currently at 0.66, its lowest level since the market meltdown of 2008.
The next chart, from our friend Frank Holmes at US Global Investors, measures gold's 60-day percent change in standard deviation terms. It shows the metal's actual gain or loss in relation to its average price change—and it's never been this low.
Another chart from US Global Investors demonstrates that last year's decline in the Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index (XAU) was the greatest on record, and further, that consecutive annual declines are rare. The XAU is one of the two most-watched gold stock indices in the world, and in 30 years it's never had a losing streak of more than three years.
Also, JPMorgan noted last week that speculative positions in gold (defined as net longs minus shorts) dropped to record lows at the end of 2013.
(Zero Hedge)
Finally, as we've shown before, the XAU/gold ratio is at its lowest point in history, and the HUI/gold ratio—the other major gold stock index—shows that gold stocks are now cheaper than they've been since the beginning of this secular bull cycle in 2001.
Of course, just because something is cheap today doesn't mean it will soar tomorrow. But given gold's historical role as money, butted up against monetary recklessness today, the outcome seems all but certain.
I like how Casey Editor Kevin Brekke recently put it. "We are in this sector because of our belief that monetary and fiscal excesses have consequences. The only variable is the timing. We may not know where we're going in the short term, but the long term is inevitable."
So what do you buy if you want to speculate like a contrarian and have a shot at tenfold returns? The greatest gains will obviously be with the junior miners—and Louis James just recommended a stock with all the early hallmarks of a world-class mine in the making.
The company I'm talking about recently delivered excellent, high-grade drill results. And to show you how good the story really is, the stock is one of the few resource picks that doubled in 2013… a real feat in a market that was beaten-down like no other last year.
That's not all: the deposit is a mix of copper and gold, so even if apparent economic recovery makes gold take longer to recover, we should win anyway due to the copper, the price of which usually moves with the general economy. I personally own this stock, and right now, the risk is lower than when I first bought it.
So if you want to catch this narrow window of opportunity and lay the foundation for potential riches, I suggest giving the Casey International Speculator a risk-free try. Thanks to our 3-month full money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose and the potential for gains only a true contrarian can expect. Click here to get started.
