This page aims at proving helpful information to investors that is usually considered alternative and is rarely known by the public. Therefore using these useful resources of information you will do better in this complicated investment world.

1. True Inflation.

Government Lies About the Real Inflation Rate. Officially, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said the inflation rate, or Consumer Price Index (CPI), for 2011 was 3%. But a report issued by the non-profit group American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) says the U.S. inflation rate for 2011 is far higher – 8%.

AIER uses criteria based only on common daily expenditures to more accurately reflect how inflation affects consumers. Their index excluded less-frequently purchased items such as automobiles for example. While economic consultant John Williams, an outspoken critic of the government’s economic statistics, believes things are even worse. Using the government’s old methodology from 1980 – before politicians started to abuse with the formula – he calculates the real inflation rate is about 10%. Believe me the old methodology is still accurate and I can freely say that this time is no different. Just do some research on “hedonics”, “substitution” to understand how governments manipulate the data.

The rate of the true inflation is nowhere near the one shown in government reports and statistics. As of Feb 17, 2012 the official USA annual consumer inflation is about 2.5% while the true one is between 8 and 11%. Only by using the true inflation we can know the true real interest rates which are crucial for any investment analysis.

“”Government data are biased in politically correct directions and increasingly have diverged from common experience and reality since the mid-1980s,” Williams says on his Web site, Shadowstats.com.” On his website you can check up to date true inflation rate.

2. Credible Ratings. Corporate and Sovereign Ratings.

Forget Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investor Service, and Fitch Ratings. Weiss Ratings is the only agency you need for credible ratings that are unlikely to have been influenced by political or financial factors. I find Weiss Ratings as top-notch and there is no agency that I trust more.

Here is their Sovereign Ratings List for 2011: http://weissratings.com/images/email/042811-table-1.png

As you can see from the list, Japan and USA have “C” ratings, while “A” rated countries are hard to find. This is in line with the current sovereign debt loads and risks nowadays.

3. Google Trends

You can use Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends/ to search for different keywords see how interested the general public is in them. As I presented in few articles, parabolic asset moves are usually accompanied by  prabolic moves in the google search rank as the public gets interested in the investment asset.

4. CRB Commodity Yearbook

If you are serious about investing in commodities you just can not go without getting the CRB Commodity Yearbook. Every year they publish a new yearbook that offers the supply and demand data for hundreds of commodities as well as their price charts. You can also find a lot of extra details that will help your analysis. I know about this book from Jim Rogers who buys it every year and has every their book since 1971.

I am going to add more useful resources to this page so I encourage you to visit it at least once a month.