Friday, January 15, 2016
Stocks Bear Market Gaining Momentum / Stock-Markets / Stocks Bear Market
On the 15th. of December last we noted that the Dow Transports had given a re-confirmed bear signal and accordingly we advised caution. Since then the Dow Industrials have fallen 989 points (approx). The Industrials need to break the 15,750 level for a full bear market to be re-confirmed. Based on yesterday’s price action, in all probability, this will happen sooner rather than later. (Remember our initial Dow Theory sell signal was triggered January 2015).
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Friday, January 15, 2016
Re-Covering Oil and War / Politics / Crude Oil
The first thing that popped into our minds on Tuesday when WTI oil briefly broached $30 for its first $20 handle in many years, was that this should be triggering a Gawdawful amount of bets, $30 being such an obvious number. Which in turn would of necessity lead to a -brief- rise in prices.
Apparently even that is not so easy to see, since when prices did indeed go up after, some 3% at the ‘top’, ‘analysts’ fell over each other talking up ‘bottom’, ‘rebound’ and even ‘recovery’. We’re really addicted to that recovery idea, aren’t we? Well, sorry, but this is not about recovering, it’s about covering (wagers).
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Friday, January 15, 2016
Oil Wars 2016 - US vs Russia vs Saudi Arabia vs Iran / Commodities / Crude Oil
The oil price collapse is having a devastating impact on ALL of the worlds major oil producers as it's not just a case of what is the break-even price but the price necessary to finance government budgets that are now in deep deficits which has been triggering increasing global instability as the price has slid to $30. In fact the budgets of virtually every major oil producer requires an oil price north of $80 just to break-even. With several such as Russia requiring $100+. Furthermore the oil price slump of 2015 has played a large part in sparking economic mass migration out of African oil producers such as Nigeria whose government requires an oil price of $120 to balance it's budget.
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Friday, January 15, 2016
Silver & Gold Stocks Dangerously Close to Breakdown / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2016
The fledgling rebound in the precious metals complex suddenly reversed course. Since the intraday peak last Thursday, gold stocks (GDX and GDXJ) declined about 13% while Gold lost $1100/oz and today (Thursday) $1080/oz. Silver, which did not mount much of a rebound to begin with remains mired below $13/oz. Gold is showing increasing relative strength (as we noted last week) and that is a good thing. However, the poor performance from Silver and sudden sharp reversal in the gold miners signals that the sector is on the cusp of making new lows.
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Friday, January 15, 2016
The Bond Bubble Has Begun Bursting / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
The bursting of the bond bubble has begun.
As I’ve outlined previously the primary concern for Central Banks is the bond bubble. CNBC and other financial media focus on stocks because the asset class is more volatile and so makes for better content, but the foundation of the financial system is bonds. And bonds are THE focus for Central Banks.
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Friday, January 15, 2016
Stock Market Flippity Flop / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
Stocks were in rally mode today, in an attempt to dampen fear and encourage confidence.
While they were most likely short term oversold, the 'rally' was all artifice, and had the feel of the kind of forced cheeriness in the big household during times of plague.
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Friday, January 15, 2016
Brazillian Bovespa Stock Market Set To Rally / Stock-Markets / Brazil
The Brazillian stock index, the Bovespa, has generally been trading exactly as outlined back in May 2015 and I believe we now have the final low at hand with today's low of 38459.
Let's analyse the technicals using the daily and monthly charts.
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Friday, January 15, 2016
War Between Saudi Arabia And Iran Could Send Oil Prices To $250 / Commodities / Crude Oil
The rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran has quickly ballooned into the worst conflict in decades between the two countries.
The back-and-forth escalation quickly turned the simmering tension into an overt struggle for power in the Middle East. First, the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric prompted protestors to set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations and kicked out Iranian diplomatic personnel. Tehran banned Saudi goods from entering Iran. Worst of all, Iran blames Saudi Arabia for an airstrike that landed near its embassy in Yemen.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
The American Dream is Dying But it Can be Revived / Economics / US Economy
Charles Hugh Smith and Gordon T Long follow-up to their discussion last month of the puzzle of the falling US Civilian Labor Participation Rate. In this session they tackle the issues associated with "Universal Basic Income" which the public narrative has begun to 'offer up' as a solution.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
Stock Market Retracement May be Winding Down / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
The recent moves in SPX have added clarity to the Wave formation. On the left you can see the “best fit” of the Elliott Waves to the decline. The impulse ended at 1886.40, as originally proposed. The rest is a corrective retracement of that decline. Thus far, it has retraced 27.4% of the decline. It may go as high as the Wave [iv] peak at 1950.33, but may be finished already.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
Dow Down Nearly 1,500 Points This Year While Obama Claims U.S. Economy Is Great / Economics / US Economy
America, the individual triumph of millions of individuals through the generations has now become the “United State” and like any fascist or communist dictatorship, lies have increased as freedom has decreased. Many huddled around their TV sets (although in decreasing numbers – which is the real hope!) and heard a concentrated dose of untruths last night from the Great Leader for the “State of the Union”.
I didn’t watch. Politicians make me sick to my stomach and the sight of an entire throng of welfare-recipients (Congress) cheering for minutes on end for a man who has never held a real job in his life as he reads from his teleprompter is too much of a chore.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
Stock Market Rally with No Market Breadth / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
SPX completed a Wave (b) of [ii] at 1878.93. Wave (b)s are erratic and do not obey trendlines and necklines as a general rule. While this Wave (b) did break the neckline, it didn’t stay beneath due to the necessity of Wave (c) to finish the correction and relieve the oversold condition. So my anticipation of a pop this morning was correct, but not in the way I had anticipated.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
Stock Market Analysts are Now Bearish... / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
The Head & Shoulders neckline has now been crossed. As soon as it is retested from beneath, we may see a much larger decline in speed and distance. There is a lot of open space between the neckline and the next support.
The analyst community have thrown in the towel, as ZeroHedge reports, “Something has definitely changed in the market: while for the past seven years (a period largely coincident with an easy, ZIRPing or QEing Fed) every day would be greeted with numerous research pieces, all urging traders to buy the dip, and to otherwise stay invested in stocks, now all the equity firms have turned their back on the S&P, and first Goldman, then JPM, then UBS, then every other equity trader has urged clients not only not to BTFD any more, but to STFR.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
Market Forecasts 2016: An About-Face for the Fed and Gold / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2016
Synopsis: The Federal Reserve's December interest rate hike was actually the end of the Fed's tightening cycle that began with the first taper talk several years ago. The Fed will be forced to restart QE and lower interest rates again (maybe even into negative territory) when it becomes clear the US economy is sliding back into recession. When that happens, investors who have been selling gold on expectations of economic health will have to reverse their bets and begin buying as gold rallies.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
Gold Price Declined and Simultaneously Rose in 2015 / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
The U.S. dollar price of gold declined in 2015, but the same year gold advanced in many other currencies. What can we learn from this behavior?
The London spot price of the shiny metal, in U.S. dollars, declined 9.56 percent from $1172 to $1060 last year, marking its fourth full year in a bear market. It also fell from the perspective of the Swiss franc, British pound and Japanese yen. However, gold prices quoted in other major currencies show a different picture.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
The Perils of "Buying the Dip" in U.S. Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
Legions of bargain hunters have suffered losses by buying stock market dips at the start of bear markets.
Making matters worse, they decimate their portfolios by continuing to buy all the way down, only to capitulate at the bottom.
This chart and commentary is from Elliott Wave International's April 2001 Financial Forecast:
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
UBS Warns Stock Market “Rolling Over” – “Buy Gold” / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
UBS has warned that the seven-year cycle in equities is rolling over, we could see a sharp 30% correction in stocks and that as per the headline of their ‘Technical Outlook 2016′, it is time to “buy gold”.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
Stock Market More Downtrend Ahead Or Volatile Bottoming Action Before Rebound? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
Briefly: In our opinion, speculative long positions are favored (with stop-loss at 1,840, and profit target at 1,990, S&P 500 index)
Our intraday outlook is now bullish, and our short-term outlook is bullish. However, our medium-term outlook remains bearish, as the S&P 500 index extends its lower highs, lower lows sequence:
Intraday outlook (next 24 hours): bullish
Short-term outlook (next 1-2 weeks): bullish
Medium-term outlook (next 1-3 months): bearish
Long-term outlook (next year): bullish
Thursday, January 14, 2016
The Scariest Commodity Market Chart on the Planet / Commodities / CRB Index
Excerpt from Tonight's Wednesday Report
The implications of this 60 year quarterly chart for the CRB index is staggering if it completes this impulse move down which so far has been working out beautifully. Again on this massive time scale you can see an unbalanced H&S top that measures out to just below the major support zone at the bottom of the chart.
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Thursday, January 14, 2016
Stock Market and the Mysterious Mr. VIX / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
I must say that I continue to be amazed at how "CALM" things are in these equity markets in spite of the significant chart breakdowns that are now being seen in so many different sectors.
Look at how meager the move higher in the VIX has been especially compared to where it was back in August of last year during the "Flash Crash" that occurred back then.
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