Category: Financial Markets 2020
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Friday, March 20, 2020
Four Key Stock Market Questions To This Coronavirus Crisis Everyone is Asking / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Recently, I was asked to participate in a live radio talk with Arnold Gay and Yasmin Wonkers at Money 89.3 Asia First and was sent the following questions to prepare for the show. I thought this would be a great way to share my thoughts and expectations related to the Covid-19 virus, global economics and what the Central Banks are doing to combat this virus economic event.
The reality is that the bottom in the markets won’t set up until fear subsides and the unknowns related to this virus event are behind us. Until then, the global markets will attempt to seek out the true valuation levels based on this fear and the unknowns. This means true valuation could be much further away from current price levels as the virus event is still very fluid in nature.
I’ve included a few of our custom index charts to highlight exactly where the markets are currently situated and have attempted to explain my thinking related to these charts. Please continue reading.
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Thursday, March 19, 2020
CORONAVIRUS - Here Be Dragons, 'Hic Sunt Dracones' / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Bob Moriarty of 321gold explains why he believes the world is in uncharted waters.
We have sailed off the map of the known world into totally uncharted waters. No one, including me, knows exactly where we are or where we are headed.
But hic sunt dracones is an excellent warning, here be dragons. If I was still flying and needed to give a brief to my passengers, I'd be saying, "I have some good news and some bad news. First the bad news. We have flown off the edge of my maps and we are totally lost without a clue as to where we are."
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Friday, March 13, 2020
Coronavirus Impact: Financial Markets Meltdown / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
WHO declared coronavirus outbreak pandemic as confirmed cases top 124k globally. Meanwhile almost 4,600 are dead. Germany’s Merkel says 60-70% of population potentially at risk. Italy closes most stores. US has restricted non-essential travel from Europe.
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Thursday, March 12, 2020
Markets, Mania, and Meltdown - a Brief Synopsis of the Past Month / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
The past month has been one of nearly continuous turmoil in the financial markets”. That might well be the understatement of this still fairly new century. Keep in mind that during the past 20 years, we’ve had 2 significant recessions (according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis), a complete meltdown of the .com mania, the inflation of a real-estate bubble and its subsequent bursting, the halving of US financial indexes, and the bankruptcy of names like Lehman Brothers, and AIG to name a few. Throw in a massive bailout, a fusillade of rescue programs like TARP, TSLF and the resulting blowout of the federal reserve’s balance sheet. This is within the first 10 years. Keep that in mind.
The second ten years have featured D-E-B-T – on all levels. Governments of the world, states and provinces, local municipalities and parishes, students, consumers, homeowners. In short? Pretty much everyone. That debt has driven the economy for the past decade. Globally. Many will think this is just an American problem. It’s not. Misery loves company, right? Not so fast. In this brave new world of interlocking economies and financial systems, a failure on the other side of the world can cause problems in our own back yards.
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Wednesday, March 11, 2020
The Fed’s Baffling Response to the Coronavirus Explained / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
When the World Health Organization announced on Feb. 24 that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points, or 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, the Federal Reserve on March 3 slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in its first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off.
Exasperated commentators on CNBC wondered what the Fed was thinking. They said a half-point rate cut would not stop the spread of the coronavirus or fix the broken Chinese supply chains that are driving U.S. companies to the brink. A new report by corporate data analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet calculates that some 51,000 companies around the world have one or more direct suppliers in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus. At least 5 million companies globally have one or more tier-two suppliers in the region, meaning that their suppliers get their supplies there; and 938 of the Fortune 1,000 companies have tier-one or tier-two suppliers there. Moreover, fully 80% of U.S. pharmaceuticals are made in China. A break in the supply chain can grind businesses to a halt.
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Wednesday, March 11, 2020
The DSI Says Gold and Bonds Are About to Tank / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Bob Moriarty of 321gold explains why he believes gold needs a correction.
In military aviation pilots are taught about an important concept called being on the Back Side of the Power Curve. For every aircraft and altitude there is a speed and power curve. Until the aircraft gets too slow things work just fine. A lot like the Fed. But when the aircraft flies too slow and drag gets too high, the addition of more power makes the situation worse. The aircraft stalls no matter how much power the pilot applies. A lot like the Fed.
On Tuesday the 3rd of March the Fed surprised the market with a 50 basis point drop in interest rates. The move was intended to reassure the market that the Fed had things under control. The market in turn surprised the Fed by doing the opposite of what those investing using the rear view mirror believed.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Fed's Real Mandate: Ever Expanding Asset Bubbles / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Wall Street hit a new all-time high on February 20th. It was supposed to be smooth sailing from there, riding along the global liquidity wave. But then, that wave crashed into what turned out to be the fastest correction from a new high in the history of the US stock market. Even though the fall was mild in comparison to the record-breaking bull run of the past few years, it was enough to frighten central planners to the core. Hence, we had further confirmation on Tuesday, March 3rd of what we already knew: our central bank has been fully corrupted and co-opted by Wall Street.The Fed lowered rates by 50bps in an emergency meeting, even though its regularly scheduled meeting was just two weeks away--maybe Trump will now give Powell the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But someone should have informed the White House and the Fed that the 4th rate cut in a rate-cutting cycle has nearly always led to market panics. But to be clear, the only reason the Fed cut rates is that the stock market suffered a brief correction. It wasn't a bear market or a recession. It wasn't even runaway deflation or an outright recession scare, …but just an 8% fall in stock prices from an all-time bubble high at the time of its decision.
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Monday, March 09, 2020
A Battle Of Titans: The Coronavirus Versus The Fed / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
There is a potential global tragedy that is unfolding in terms of the coronavirus epidemic, that may be on the verge of becoming a global pandemic. We simply don't know - nobody knows - at this stage what the eventual impact and number of mortalities will be in the United States and in the rest of the world.
What we do know is that the global supply chain is getting hit very hard. There are many economists who believe that we are potentially on the verge of what could be called a coronavirus recession where a shutdown of the supply out of China, ripples through shutdowns in Japan and South Korea (among many other nations), which combine to hit the US and European economies with a supply side shock.
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Monday, March 09, 2020
Market Fear Reaches A Level Seen Only 4 Times Since 2008 / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Since 2009 the stock market has had for major waves of investor fear (volatility) take place which was in 2010, 2011, 2015, and 2018. Each time the market corrected we saw a drop anywhere from 12% – 18% and both traders and investors became emotional and started selling assets in fear of lower prices. What we are experiencing right now is the same sort of setup once again.
These waves of panic selling are a signature pattern of a mini-crash and they have similar outcomes each time which I will share with you here so you know what to expect and how to trade this rare market condition.
It takes a lot to convince the masses to reach this level of fear. Each of these mini-market crashes there has been some catalysts to further induce fear/selling. This time its Covid-19 that is tipping the scales.
Only two assets have acted as a safe haven which is bonds, and gold. Once again everyone has been piling into these over the past week, and even more so on Friday with Bonds surging 6.5% at one point during the session.
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Thursday, March 05, 2020
Fed Coronavirus Reaction Was Not What Most Expected / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Early Tuesday morning, I put out an update to our members of ElliottWaveTrader.net that noted that the 3135 region as the top of our resistance region, which can point us lower once struck.
Now, we all know that the “surprise” rate cut by the Fed should have been viewed as a positive to the market. In fact, most expected the Fed to act soon, and were certain how this would send the market soaring again.
However, I continue to reiterate that when the market is in a positive sentiment trend, the Fed action will always be viewed as positive. Yet, when the market is in a negative sentiment trend, the Fed will not likely be able to stem the tide of negative sentiment. They simply cannot change the sentiment of the market, despite the common misconception to the contrary.
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Tuesday, March 03, 2020
As COVID-19 Rocks Markets, Uncertainty Rises in ASEAN / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
As the virus momentum is shifting from China to other countries, Southeast Asia faces new economic pressures and indirect collateral damage, due to outbreaks in Japan and South Korea, and inadequate international preparedness.Worldwide, the number of confirmed novel coronavirus (COVID-19) cases could exceed 100,000 in a matter of week or so. The momentum of the outbreak has shifted, however.
In early February, I predicted a turnaround in the growth rate of new virus cases in China, but acceleration internationally. That's now the new normal. Until then, the cases in China were increasing exponentially. Now the momentum is increasingly outside China. In terms of the timeline, the number of confirmed cases outside China is now about the same as it was in the Chinese mainland about a month ago (Figure).
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Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Fake Markets Are on Collision Course with Reality / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Keeping up appearances is about to get a lot harder for the central planners trying to manage perceptions of the U.S. (and global) economy. The coronavirus is going to have a meaningful impact on global supply chains, even if stock market cheerleaders haven’t fully realized it yet.
This might be because the corporate media and ruling elites are burning a lot of what is left of their fading credibility trying to ignore or downplay the problem.
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Monday, February 17, 2020
Financial Markets News Report: February 17, 2020 - February 21, 2020 / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
The financial markets continued trading in a risk-on mode last week, as China virus fears were easing and economic data was supporting Fed’s easy monetary policy. This week we will have another series of quite important economic data releases. Let’s take a look at the details.
The week behind
The corona virus fears have almost disappeared last week, as investors’ sentiment has been improving following record-breaking U.S. stock market rally. Tuesday’s-Wednesday’s Testimony from the Fed’s Jerome Powell reassured global financial markets that easy monetary policy will be continued in the future. And we highlighted it in our last week’s Market News Report. Thursday’s Consumer Price Index came in as expected, so inflation remains very low. However, Friday’s Retail Sales number wasn’t that good. And the price of gold remained within a short-term uptrend last week.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Powell says Fed will aggressively use QE to fight next recession / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Today from Fed Chairman Powell…
Powell says Fed will aggressively use QE to fight next recession
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday the central bank would fight the next economic downturn by buying large amounts of government debt to drive down long-term interest rates, a strategy that has been dubbed quantitative easing, or QE.
Of course they will. The fix is always in, isn’t it? Wouldn’t want to let a system and associated economy so far out on a brittle limb weighed down by exponential debt leverage go it on its own, now would we? Wouldn’t want anything like a naturally functioning economy because until an utter and complete crash and clean out, there can be no such thing. So more debt manipulation it is!
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Monday, February 10, 2020
Coronavirus Cure: Print More Money / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
A few days ago the market was crashing on Coronavirus fears. But recently, the market has soared back based upon the hopes of a vaccine and some better than expected economic data in the US. The ADP January employment report showed that a net 291k jobs were created, and the ISM Services Index came in at a healthy 55.5. However, a couple of good data points doesn't change the fact that US economic growth has contracted back to 2% trend growth and will absolutely become more anemic--at least in the short-term. This is because the measures needed to contain the virus are also GDP killers. I have no clue if the virus will become a pandemic or if it will fade away like the SARS and MERS viruses--without long-term economic damage. But, for the stock market to remain at record high valuations, nearly everything has to go perfectly. That is, the Fed has to keep pumping in money, and EPS growth must rebound sharply. Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, February 09, 2020
Fed to Stimulate in Any Crisis; Don’t Let Short-Term Events Bother You / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in Axel Merk President and Chief Investment Officer of Merk Investments and author of the book Sustainable Wealth. Axel is a well-known market commentator and money manager and is a highly sought-after guest at financial conferences and on news outlets throughout the world and it's always great to have him on with us here on the Money Metals Podcast.
Axel, it's a pleasure to have you back and thanks for joining us again. Welcome.
Axel Merk: Good to be with you.
Mike Gleason: Well, I'd like to start by getting your take on the coronavirus since that has been dominating headlines in recent days. There is an awful lot of speculation about how markets might be impacted. Some people think it is a tempest in a teapot, others think the apocalypse is upon us. Everyone has to rely on data coming out of China, which is always a dodgy proposition, but what are your thoughts about the virus and what it could mean for financial markets in the weeks and months ahead?
Wednesday, February 05, 2020
Gold and Stock Market Barometric Bedlam / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Sector expert Michael Ballanger charts last month's market moves. Back in the 1980s, I had a boss that was right out of Monty Python. A Canadian by birth, he was the son of a very wealthy English nobleman who spent a number of years in Brazil as CEO of Brazilian Traction, where he was raised by servants and nannies and attended private boarding school at Upper Canada College in Toronto.
"James" was a thoroughly English gentlemen on the outside but a scandalous hell-raiser in private quarters. I recall him at a squash club banquet standing on the dining table wrapped in the Union Jack, tumbler of gin in hand, reciting a totally X-rated, four-stanza limerick that began "The once were three nuns from Birmingham (pronounced BIR-MING-UM), and here is the story concerning 'em. . .". It was his saintly wife, "Jane," who solemnly declared in the wee hours of one debaucherous morning in his basement that we had better "cease and desist with this unnecessary drinking," never revealing what might be the definition of "necessary drinking," a conundrum left unsolved for nigh-on thirty-five years.
The reason I mention this is that as we await the reopening of Chinese markets after the New Year's week closures, I am sure that many investors are engaged in "necessary drinking" as they await either a) the crash in virus-infected markets or b) the arrival of the Chinese central planner trading desk and legion after legion of stock-buying roboticized carbon units pumping up stocks to prevent a total disintegration of all things Chinese next week.
I, for one, haven't decided which it will be but I went into this weekend happier than I have been in a month because there is only one thing worse than certainty of losing money and that is the UN-certainty of losing money. The stress of reacting to events is a good stress but worrying about the nature of events is bad stress and bad stress kills. We now know that global growth is tumbling and about to get worse and that the coronavirus is a global pandemic and that both events are good for what we own and bad for what we are short (or have already sold).
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Tuesday, February 04, 2020
Gerald Celente Speaks Out on Iran, Coronavirus, Gold and Global Protests / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome back the one and the only Gerald Celente, publisher of the renowned Trends Journal. Mr. Celente is a frequent guest here on the Money Metals podcast and perhaps is the most well-known trends forecaster in the world and it's always great to have him on with us.
Gerald, thanks for the time again today. I guess we can still say happy new year. Welcome back to you.
Gerald Celente: Well thank you and thank you for your kind words.
Mike Gleason: Well, Gerald, here we are at the start of another year and a new decade also. At the start of the last decade in 2010 we were in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis that looked like the reckoning for all the debt, the expansion of government and the irresponsible, crooked behavior of folks on Wall Street wouldn't be too far away, the Tea Party movements and Occupy Wall Street were indications that people had just about enough. But here we are. The debt bubble is much larger, there have been exactly zero accountability or restraint on Wall Street, government is much bigger and more expensive than other and somehow most Americans have been lulled back to sleep. Stock prices are up. The president is talking about the greatest economy ever. Clearly the lessons of the last financial crisis don't seem to have stuck. What do you make of that and what are you expecting for the decade ahead given that people seem to have short attention spans and a high tolerance for nonsense? Can the powers that be keep the wheels on this sorry system for another decade?
Thursday, January 30, 2020
Deep Analysis and charts: Risk Market ignore global pandemic fears / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
There has been two major events in January. First there was the brief intensification of the conflict between the U.S. and Iran, which quickly ramped back down. Secondly there is the coronavirus epidemic in China, which in the space of a week has spread from Wuhan and imprinted itself globally at pandemic levels, bringing much of China to a standstill when it would usually be celebrating the Lunar New Year.
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Wednesday, January 29, 2020
The "Everything Bubble" Just Burst. Here's Why / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
Bob Moriarty of 321gold reflects on how government actions in the financial and public health spheres will pop market bubbles.
I was in Vietnam from July 1968 until March 1970. From November 1968 until July 1969 I was flying the O-1 Birddog as a forward air controller (FAC). Back then I used to believe all the bull our government puts out. Now, when Trump says the Iranians fired missiles at a US base in Iraq and none of our troops were injured, I know at once he was lying. And sure enough, two weeks later we find that 34 soldiers were injured.
Governments lie about everything and as a result we are about to pay a terrible price. All of them lie.
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