Saturday, June 24, 2017
The Swiss National Bank Owns $80 Billion in US Stocks—Here’s the Catch / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: John_Mauldin
Switzerland is a small country of just 8 million people, but they make an outsized impact on economics and finance and money.
Because Switzerland is considered a safe haven and a well-run country, many people would like to hold large amounts of their assets in the Swiss franc. This makes the Swiss franc intolerably strong for Swiss businesses and citizens.
So the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has to print a great deal of money and use nonconventional means to hold down the value of their currency. Their overnight repo rate is -0.75%.
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Saturday, June 24, 2017
Proof That This Economic Recovery Narrative is False / Economics / US Economy
By: Sol_Palha
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it. Bertrand Russell
The financial media has provided reams of data trying to lay out the case that this economic recovery is real. Many of the statistics provided do indeed support the theme that the outlook is improving. One must, however, keep these two facts in mind when looking at the data:
- The Fed poured huge amounts of money into this market. Minus the money, this so-called economic recovery would have never come to pass
- Due to the low-interest rate environment, corporation borrowed money on the cheap and poured billions into share buybacks since the crash of 2009.
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Best Cash ISA for Soaring Inflation, Kent Reliance Illustrates the Great ISA Rip Off / Personal_Finance / ISA's
By: Nadeem_Walayat
According to the mainstream press there are emerging signs of life in the UK savings markets as the new tax year has kicked into gear, finally offering some hope to Britain's savers after a near 5 years of a catastrophic downward death spiral in UK interest rates, one of being ripped off by the tax payer bailed out banking crime syndicate that for the duration has continued to bank bonuses on the basis of artificial profits engineered by the Bank of England in an attempt at recapitalisng the bankrupt banks all whilst the savers continue to suffer and pay the price in terms of loss of purchasing power of savings by means of sub inflation interest rates.
Friday, June 23, 2017
Gold Summer Doldrums / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Zeal_LLC
Gold has spent most of June grinding lower on balance, damaging sentiment and vexing traders. Usual selling leading into the Fed’s latest rate hike contributed, but the summer doldrums are also in play. Gold has typically suffered a seasonal lull this time of year, on waning investment demand as vacations divert attention from markets. But these summer doldrums offer the best seasonal buying opportunities of the year.
This doldrums term is very apt for gold’s summer predicament. It describes a zone in the world’s oceans surrounding the equator. There hot air is constantly rising, creating long-lived low-pressure areas. They are often calm, with little or no prevailing winds. History is full of accounts of sailing ships getting trapped in this zone for days or even weeks, unable to make any headway. The doldrums were murder on ships’ morale.
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Friday, June 23, 2017
Gold’s Seasonality: Time to Get Positioned Ahead of Strongest Months / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: HAA
Despite the recent weakness, the price of gold is still up 9% year to date and may be poised for a strong second half of 2017. This is not unusual: the yellow metal also had a strong start in 2016, only to give back some gains but ended the year in an uptrend, setting up a rally as the calendar moved to 2017.
So is there a seasonal pattern to the gold price? To answer that question, we dissected gold’s performance dating back to 1975 and identified some trends investors can use to their advantage.
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Friday, June 23, 2017
EUR/JPY Exchange Rate and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
We argued many times that the yellow metal behaves as a currency rather than as a commodity. Hence, macroeconomic factors and currency exchange rates affect the price of gold. In previous editions of the Market Overview, we analyzed the impact of the U.S. dollar and its exchange rate with the Euro and the Yen on the gold market. We pointed out that gold is negatively correlated with the greenback, so it moves in tandem with the Japanese or European common currency, as they are the major rivals of the U.S. dollar.
Friday, June 23, 2017
Risk measurement? Volatility doesn’t cut it / Stock-Markets / Volatility
By: Submissions
Henrique Schneider writes: Almost every investor and almost every portfolio use volatility as an indication of risk. There’s nothing awfully wrong with that. But some investors and some portfolios reduce risk to volatility. And this is a serious error, since gauging on volatility is myopic, misinformed and revenue-averse. Why?
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Friday, June 23, 2017
Hedgers Net Short the Euro, US Market Rotates; 2 Horsemen Set to Ride? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2017
By: Gary_Tanashian
In line with our bullish forward view on USD, behold the very bearish state of the Commercial Hedger positions in the Euro (courtesy of Sentimentrader). Recent historical data speaks for itself. It appears a decline in the Euro is imminent (which, in market terms means ‘relax, it could be a while yet’ ).
Friday, June 23, 2017
Crude Oil, Fresh Lows and Support Zone / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Nadia_Simmons
On Wednesday, the black gold moved lower once again after government data showed an increase in crude oil production, which offset a decline in crude oil and gasoline inventories. Thanks to these circumstances, light crude hit a fresh 2017 low. What’s next for the commodity?
Let’s take a closer look at the charts and find out (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).
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Friday, June 23, 2017
Warning: Oil Crash Is Just Days Away From Triggering a Debt Crisis / Stock-Markets / Financial Crash
By: Graham_Summers
The Oil collapse is about to trigger a crisis in junk bonds.
Oil has been going straight down for weeks now. As we write this, black gold is below $43 a barrel, down 16% from its levels a month ago.
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Friday, June 23, 2017
Did Central Banks Just Pull the Plug On Another Credit Bubble? / Stock-Markets / Liquidity Bubble
By: Graham_Summers
Last week the NY Fed downgraded its economic forecast for 2Q17 to just 1.9%. Even worse, it is now forecasting 2017 total growth to be a measly 1.5%.
Yes, 1.5%.
There is a clear trend to this chart… and it’s NOT up.
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Friday, June 23, 2017
SPX and NDX meet Fib and Cycle Requirements / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
You may be interested to know that the current (or should I say past) Cycle took exactly 17.2 hours of elapsed time from top to top. It also made a mere 47% Fibonacci retracement.
The next move is a break of the Broadening Wedge trendline that, when triggered, forecasts a decline beneath the Brexit low at 1991.00.
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Friday, June 23, 2017
Gold and Silver Are "Asymmetric" Trades / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: MoneyMetals
By David Smith: An asymmetric trade is a situation where investing a relatively small amount of money holds the potential of yielding a profit many times the amount of the original sum at risk. In other words, where the risk to reward is skewed massively in the direction of reward.
This took place recently with Bitcoin (BTC). Is this conceptually different from bets made years ago on Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, or Facebook, which yielded hundreds of percent profit to intrepid investors? Does it have relevance to the possible returns during the next few years for those who hold physical gold and silver?
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Friday, June 23, 2017
Nether Edge By Election Result: Labour Win Sheffield City Council Seat by 132 Votes / ElectionOracle / Sheffield
By: N_Walayat
The Labour party managed to cling on to their Nether Edge and Sharrow Sheffield city council seat on a reduced majority as the Lib Dems split the opposition vote thus depriving the Green party of their 5th city councillor as the results illustrate:
STEINKE Jim - Labour Party 2641
UNWIN Rob - Green Party 2509
ALI Shahid - Liberal Democrats 722
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Here’s Why China’s Supposed Influence Over North Korea Is A Bluff / Politics / North Korea
By: John_Mauldin
By Xander Snyder : The US is pushing China deeper into a corner over the crisis with North Korea. It wants the Chinese to persuade the North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
The popular perception is that Beijing has substantial leverage over Pyongyang, partly because China is North Korea’s largest trading partner. This impression also stems from China’s proposals to mediate trade concessions between North Korea and the United States.
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Thursday, June 22, 2017
FAANG Is Now a Textbook Example of an Overheated, Unsustainable Market / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: John_Mauldin
Technology stocks suffered from a little anxiety attack in the markets last week.
It didn’t last long and really wasn’t all that serious. (Yet.) It was nothing worse than what everyone called “normal volatility” 10 years ago.
But the lack of concern it generated this time is not bullish. More than a few investors seem to think that “nowhere but up” is somehow normal.
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Thursday, June 22, 2017
The Deflation Application / Economics / Deflation
By: Charles_Sizemore
Once in a while I see a financial news headline so obviously ridiculous, I feel I should look at the writer with pity in my eyes and pat them on the head, the way you might comfort a child that just dropped his ice cream cone on the floor.“Inflation is Right Around the Corner, Yellen Insists.”
Of course it is…
In defense of the columnist who wrote the story, these weren’t necessarily his views. He was simply relaying the Fed Chair’s comments from Wednesday.
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Thursday, June 22, 2017
Grenfell Fire: 600 of 4000 Tower Blocks Ticking Time Bomb Death Traps! / Housing-Market / UK Housing
By: Nadeem_Walayat
As suspected the use of combustible cladding that the residents of Grenfell Tower paid a heavy price for is widespread across Britain's social housings sector, not a dozen suspected tower blocks, or even 100, but as many as 600 of Britain's 4000 Tower blocks could be primed to first gas (cyanide) and then incinerate their residents.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Car Sales About To Go Over The Cliff / Companies / Auto Sector
By: Harry_Dent
The Retail Apocalypse.Carmageddon.
Same story.
Different industry.
And we called both decades ago!
Autos are the last splurge for aging Baby Boomers. Their kids leave the nest and finally the parents can buy the car they wanted, not that damned minivan to taxi kids around.
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Thursday, June 22, 2017
LOG 0.786 support in CRUDE OIL and COCOA / Commodities / Commodities Trading
By: Stephen_Cox
Originally written in the Wednesday JUN 21 MRI 3D Report,
CRUDE OIL GROUP- CLQ 17 (4253): (W.D. GANN): Today is 19 trading days down from 52.00. 52×19= 988 Subtract 988 from 52.00 = 42.12 = the square of TIME and PRICE. Today’s low = 42.05.
TIME: Today is 33a/May04 LOW, 7×7(G)d/APR12 TOP and 120(G)d/55.24 Jan03 TOP
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