The rise of the ‘dollar store business model’ caters to a disappearing ‘middle class’ who are incurring shrinking incomes. This has made ‘dollar stores’ prosper, in the last decade. Dollar stores, for most Americans, have carried an odd sort of stigma.  In the past, these stores were seen as shopping for the poor, only.  We are all now aware that many people who were in the once strong American ‘middle class’ were thrown off of the prosperity path and into ‘lower income’ brackets from business layoffs, downsizing, and salary reduction.  While regular product companies struggle the expanding ‘dollar stores’ have found a niche in this economic climate.  The shrinking ‘middle class’ means more customers for ‘dollar stores’.

 A big part of the ‘new recovery’ is lining up at midnight at Wal-Mart stores in order to purchase food. There are families not able to feed their families by the end of the month. They are literally lining up at midnight at Wal-Mart stores, waiting to buy food along with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Cards when their funds are deposited into their accounts.

EBT cards are an electronic system that allows state welfare departments to issue benefits via magnetically encoded payment cards, used in the United States. The average monthly EBT payout is $125.00 per person!

Common benefits provided (in the United States) via EBT, are typically of two general categories: food and cash benefits. Food benefits are federally authorized benefits that can be used only to purchase food and non-alcoholic beverages. Food benefits are distributed through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the Food Stamp Program. Cash benefits include state general assistance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, and refugee benefits.

 There appears to be a ‘growing great divide’ within the current U.S. economy.  The financial sector is swimming in their ‘bailout-induced profits’. Within their elite circles, it appears as if the ‘recession’ is over.

However, within the average American family, they are not experiencing available access to new credit cards, equity in their homes is vanishing and they do not have a store of available capital they can access like a ‘stock portfolio’.

The table below clearly shows the middle class making less money year after year while the wealthy earn more each year. The money is slowly shifting from everyone to just the one-percenters – YIKES

middleclass

 

Conclusion:

In short, the average American is slowly earning less and becoming financially stressed about their future outlook.

If you are one of these hard working individuals experiencing a decline in business/income its best you do some research and change what you are doing because things will likely get much worse before they get better.

Mainly because of Trump thousands of Americans are looking to leave the country with the search term “How to Move to Canada” up over 1000% last month. While I love Canada, myself being a Canadian and all, there are many other great places to live and a very full life at a fraction the cost of Canada/USA.

Couple years ago I went to the DR (Dominican Republic) to see if it would work for my family in the winters to escape the cold and be surrounded in palm trees, ocean and kitesurfing. It was an awesome experience with a huge amount of development, tons of Canadians, retirees, and elegant vacation properties available at Holden Sotheby’s.

There are many ways to preserve capital and also ways to grow it substantially no matter what the economy does and I share this information in the video on the home page of my Trading Newsletter Website.

See how we made money in the last 5 days trading – Click Here

Chris Vermeulen

Good afternoon,

I just wanted to touch base before the week comes to an end.

Overall I think it was a fantastic week in terms of providing real-time analysis that unfolded exactly as out analysis predicted a with Fed news and employment numbers. This was an extremely difficult week to trade and was coasted through it and made money without breaking a sweat – well those tho watch my videos that is…

The cycle analysis I share with you is something I have learned and been working on for over 15 years and I’m still trying to improve on it. As you can see it got our money positioned perfectly in the SP500 a few weeks back, and more recently this gold trade. We got positioned, the market moved and we locked in money within the first 48 hours. I know, based on all the emails I get and how everyone words them that most traders shorted gold, bought dust weeks ago and just kept holding onto the positions praying for the market to drop. That was a wild ride both for your capital P/L statement and your emotions. All that can be avoided (in most cases) if you understand cycles or know where the market is in terms of these key cycles that I provide you with.

The less time your money is in the market the better. I would much rather make a 5.6% profit in 48 hours than hold onto an ETF for 2+ weeks to make that same amount.

Here is a quick summary this week’s performance and this morning Spike targets being hit yet again!

goldt1
spikeswrapup

Anyways, thank you all for the kind words and for everyone cutting back on sending me emails.

Chris Vermeulen