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Michael: Hello everyone, this is Michael Gross at OptionSellers.com here with your November issue of OptionSellers.com podcast. This is a special Thanksgiving edition and, boy, the world has turned upside down since our last radio show. The title of this month’s show is Trump, the Fed, and 2 BIG Markets for Taking Premium Now. I’m here with James Cordier, head trader here at OptionSellers.com. James, welcome to this month’s radio show.
James: Thank you, Michael. It’s always a pleasure and, boy, have things changed since we met last.
Michael: Well, if you’re listening to this before or after you’ve had your turkey-day, we hope to bring you some good insights here for selling options and understanding the commodities markets over the next 30 days. As we all know, on November 8th Donald Trump won the presidency and that has certainly presented a list of pitfalls and opportunities for the markets. We’re going to touch on some of those today. Also, have big Fed announcement coming up in December that will have a big impact on the markets, and we are going to discuss those today. James, why don’t we start out by just you giving your general comments on the election, what you think this means for commodities markets.
James: What’s interesting, Michael, the pollsters both in England for the Brexit and here in the United States for the presidential election really did not get it. They weren’t even close. Hillary Clinton had a 5% lead going into election night and we all know what happened there. So interesting was the initial response to Donald Trump apparently winning the election. First thing was to sell stocks with both hands and buy gold, with the idea that is just so much uncertainty and how can this gentleman out of nowhere come in and run the greatest and largest economy in the world and, lo and behold, everyone said, “You know, maybe he can. He’s a great businessman, he has been very successful, and he doesn’t mind borrowing money and building things.” Certainly, that’s something that could definitely propel the U.S. economy to levels that it hasn’t seen in quite some time. I think, personally, that both the economy and inflation, something we haven’t had grow at any marketable levels in a long time, is going to really open some eyeballs here the next 12-24 months.
Michael: We also have the other big news on the horizon here is the Fed is expected to raise interest rates in December. That could also bring some changes to the market, potential opportunities. Do you have any thoughts on that at this point?
James: Michael, the topic of discussion, I think, going forward will be U.S. growth no longer at 1%, no longer at 1.5%. We think it’s going to have a crooked number for years to come, in other words, 2%, 3%, and 4% growth. What the Federal Reserve does in order to rein in potential inflation, I think, is going to be headlines constantly with the Federal Reserve talking about raising interest rates to fight inflation, but, lo and behold, I think that’s something that the Federal Reserve has just been waiting so long for and I think we’ll, behind closed doors, do everything they can just to stoke it a little bit and let it run hot.
Michael: James, that’s a point you’ve been making in a lot of our articles recently, and recently, also on CNBC here this past Friday, you had a pretty informative interview on the gold market. Your big theme and our big theme here at OptionSellers.com is that we see inflation picking up in 2017 for a variety of reason(continued)