My family loves the Pirate of the Caribbean movies, and pirates in general. We live in Florida, which doesn't have areas named "The Gold Coast" and the Treasure Coast" for nothing.
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| Ye deadly lass bears little likeness to a real pirate ... dammit! |
I think natural resource investors can learn a lot from the pirates. I’ll give you the specific lessons in a moment. First, I want to explain how all of these factors contributed to the rise of an entire pirate economy …
Silver and Smuggling:
Taking a Shine to Pieces of Eight
Spain's rush for silver in the new world had some serious blowback. It made a lot of people greedy and jealous. And some of those people were pirates.
But can you blame them? The gold and silver of the new world were making the Spanish filthy rich!
The yield from Mexico’s mines doubled the world supply of silver in less than two centuries.
By the 1700s, Mexico’s silver mines were producing nine million troy ounces of silver each year.
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| How you make pieces of 8 from Spanish silver |
You can see why Spain quickly became the wealthiest state in Christendom. However, the country was so beggared by its corrupt, war-mongering rulers that it couldn’t afford to defend its vast holdings in the New World.
That had “opportunity” written all over it for French, English, and Dutch pirates. They swarmed the Spanish treasure ships like fleas on a bunch of slow, ungainly dogs.
What really enraged the Spanish was that the pirates did this with varying levels of complicity from their governments. Heck, Henry Morgan was such a successful privateer and pirate that the English Crown knighted him and appointed him governor of Jamaica.
Why were the other European powers so friendly to pirates? Because they were left empty-handed after the Pope gave the Caribbean and most of South America to the Spanish in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1493).
See, in the 16th Century, the Spanish “owned” South America and the Caribbean. To keep out the riff-raff (English, French and Dutch), they passed laws allowing only Spanish merchants to trade with Spanish colonies in the Americas.
Big mistake! The Spanish merchants fleeced the colonists. So, the colonists found it much better to do business on the French island of Tortuga, England’s base on Barbados, and the Dutch island of Curacao.
Meanwhile, the Spanish did have one busy port — Trinidad. But the governor there had a laughably small garrison and no fortifications. Not being a fool, he took bribes and looked the other way as French, English and Dutch smugglers did a rip-roaring business. So Trinidad also became a base for smugglers and pirates.
Every now and then peace would break out and ruin business for pirates, privateers and smugglers. But it never lasted long. And the smugglers really hit paydirt in the mid-1600s when the British Crown decreed that English colonial goods be carried only in English ships and limited trade between the English colonies and foreigners.
These laws were aimed at ruining those uppity Dutch merchants who depended on free trade. But they amounted to a windfall for smugglers.
There’s little doubt that silver and smuggling helped establish the economies of the Caribbean colonies. But Spanish silver eventually became a back-story to a much bigger commodity …
A Bittersweet Tale of
Sugar and Slavery
Sugar was so important that Columbus brought sugar cane with him on his voyage to the New World. And when the gold ran out, colonists focused on producing lots of it. By 1540, there were several large sugar plantations in Hispaniola.
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| Sugar and slavery went hand in hand. |
As Europe’s appetite for sugar grew and grew, sugar became the white gold of the Caribbean. Along with rum (made from sugar), tobacco, chocolate, and lumber, sugar was the foundation of the “golden triangle” of trade.
These were the goods that pirates were more than likely to pillage. After all, the silver fleet only sailed once a year. But an industrious pirate could make money on slaves, sugar, tobacco and manufactured goods all year long!
All the while, the European powers battled over prime sugar-growing islands. For example, the Dutch sugar island of Saint Eustatius changed ownership 10 times between 1664 and 1674 as the English and Dutch slugged it out! And guess who the European powers hired to do their dirty work in these constant battles? You get one guess, and I’ll spot you the letter “P.”
It’s fair to say that the late 1600s and early 1700s constituted a “Golden Age of Piracy.” Spanish silver production surged. Slaves were shipped by the ton. The European hunger for sugar approached a mania. And constant warfare between the European powers provided plenty of opportunities to pick up government work both preying on enemy ships and guarding colonies.
The salad days of pirates only came to an end when Britain won decisive victories at sea. That freed up the country’s navy to clear the scum from waves. After 1720, pirates were rounded up, sworn to live by the law or hanged. And this is the period we see portrayed in the Pirates of the Caribbean — when the world is changing and pirates like Jack Sparrow and Barbossa are trying to stay one step ahead of the hangman’s noose.
With the age of steam, the golden age of piracy sailed into the sunset. However, the period has left behind quite a legacy that continues to capture our imaginations today. And, for investors, there are some great lessons to be learned …
Five Pirate Tips for Sailing Through
Today’s Tricky Financial Waters
First, precious metals never go out of style. Gold and silver are great investments today, just as they were in Henry Morgan’s day. That’s because they continue to have real value.
Other metals can have their day in the sun. For example, I believe palladium demand will ramp up with demand for new cars -- and there are already expectations of a supply/demand gap in that metal.
But it's not just metals. Oil is a hot commodity, as the rest of the world wants to drive like Americans. Sure, America is producing a lot more oil. That has weighed on prices. But there are still companies that can make a killing worthy of a pirate king.
Second, it’s best to become an early investor. The first pirate to attack a Spanish treasure fleet was Jean Fleury, a privateer sanctioned by the King of France. In 1521, he bagged two lumbering treasure ships off the Azores. In those early days, nobody was expecting piracy in the middle of the Atlantic, so the treasure ships only had a few cannons and no chance against a heavily armed and determined pirate.
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| Jean Fleury, the privateer hero of France. |
Jean became a hero in France, and he was quite wealthy. But his major investor, the Viscount of Dieppe, took an even bigger share of the loot because of his foresight … and he never even had to get his feet wet.
Third, think big and long-term. By the time Henry Morgan came along, pirating was already a booming business. So he didn’t have the first-in advantage of Jean Fleury. But by 1661, young Morgan was a captain in his own right and proving himself as a master of battle tactics.
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| Henry Morgan |
Here’s the point for investors: Even if you find out about an investing trend after a lot of the easy money is made, you can still make big money with good timing and a long-term view!
Fourth, good management is critical to an endeavor’s success. England’s Queen Elizabeth I, or Queen Bess, had kind of a “thing” for pirates. Although it didn’t start with Sir Francis Drake, he was one of her favorites. He also happened to be brilliant, thoughtful and cool under fire … the perfect combination to make him a terror on both sea and land.
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| Francis Drake |
Drake bagged 200 mules carrying hundreds of pounds of silver and gold. This daring made him a millionaire.
Investors would be wise to emulate Drake’s resolve and resourcefulness. And they should also look for these same traits when they investigate the management of a company they’re about to invest in.
Fifth, good PR is worth its weight in swag. When pirates flew the skull-and-crossbones flag, they were advertising. And the message was simple — “Give us your cargo or we’ll kill you.”
Pirates relied on their fearsome reputations. One pirate captain, Edmund Condent, put three skulls on his pennant. Edward “Blackbeard” Teach wound cannon fuses into his beard and set them on fire during attacks to make himself look like the devil. And Edward Collier was known for ferociously torturing anyone who didn’t give up easily.
Though it’s slightly different these days, good advertising can still do wonders for business. Well-executed PR helps companies bring in revenue more quickly and at greater volumes. It also helps get the word out to the investment community.
So when you’re looking at a potential investment, check out the company’s marketing plans. They can really help light a fire under profits … not just the firm’s but also yours!
Modern Piracy
We still have pirates today. And they can make quite a profit. For example, when a gang of Somali pirates hijacked the supertanker Samho Dream, which was carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil from Iraq to Valero’s refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the crew was ransomed back for millions of dollars. Pirate ransoms, often paid to the kind of Somali pirates recently portrayed in the Tom Hanks movie Captain Phillips, range from $1.6 million to as high as $8 million.
The total cost of piracy worldwide is somewhere north of $1 billion a year. That's a flea bite compared to the $7 trillion a year international maritime trade. But you can see why pirates still take the risks.
Yours for trading profits,
Sean
hands free investing
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