Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Quantum Geopolitics / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
By Reva Bhalla: Forecasting the shape the world will take in several years or decades is an audacious undertaking. There are no images to observe or precise data points to anchor us. We can only create a picture, and a fuzzy one at best. This is, after all, our basic human empirical instinct: to draw effortlessly from the vivid imagery of our present world and past experiences while we squint and hesitate before faint, blobby images of the future.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Saudis Expand Crude Oil Price War Downstream / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: OilPrice_Com
The undisputed king of oil and gas is making some moves that could change the face of the global refining sector.
In June 2015, Saudi Arabia pumped a record 10.564 million barrels a day, a record level. As if being the world's biggest exporter of oil was not enough, the desert kingdom is now looking to conquer the refining sector as it has quickly become the fourth largest refiner in the world.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Geopolitics Hot Summer of 2015 is Getting a Lot Hotter / Commodities / GeoPolitics
By: Atlantic_Perspective
Bill Gates says there was never a better time to be alive. Has he ever been to Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mexico, Venezuela, Ukraine, Greece, Moldova and the whole of Central Asia, just to name a significantly big number of countries and regions?
Bill Gates, just like most people sitting at the top of the human pyramid, looks at the world from the perspective of indicators, totally disconnected from the real world.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Europe Running on Borrowed Time / Politics / European Union
By: John_Mauldin
“I am sure the euro will oblige us to introduce a new set of economic policy instruments. It is politically impossible to propose that now. But some day there will be a crisis and new instruments will be created.”
– Romano Prodi, EU Commission president, December 2001Prodi and the other leaders who forged the euro knew what they were doing. They knew a crisis would develop, as Milton Friedman and many others had predicted. It is not conceivable that these very astute men didn’t realize that creating a monetary union without a fiscal union would bring about an existential crisis. They accepted that eventuality as the price of European unity. But now the payment is coming due, and it is far larger than they probably anticipated.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
China Major Devaluation Coming / Currencies / China Currency Yuan
By: John_Rubino
The whole “market economy” thing is turning out to be a little trickier than China’s dictators expected. To set up the story: After the 2008 crash the country borrowed about $15 trillion (an amount that dwarfs the US Fed’s quantitative easing programs) and spent the proceeds on history’s biggest infrastructure program.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Inflation Deniers Emboldened by Gold's Struggles / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: MoneyMetals
The vultures are circling. Precious metals bulls, laid flat by gold and silver prices dropping for the 5th week in a row, are watching deflationists such as Harry Dent and the financial media squawk about the imminent demise of precious metals.
We covered the superficial and condescending coverage of the metals markets in the financial press last week. Since then, the financial press has stepped it up even more.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Gold Mining Stocks to Weather the Storm / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: The_Gold_Report
With ongoing volatility expected in the gold space, mostly owing to global economic weakness, investors should focus on quality gold names with three key attributes to weather the current metal price environment, explains Joseph Fazzini, vice president and senior analyst with Toronto-based Dundee Capital Markets. Fazzini says those attributes are low-cost, long-life assets; defensive balance sheets; and responsible management teams. In this interview with The Gold Report, Fazzini lists six Buy-rated names with those key attributes and more.
The Gold Report: Many of the people we interview have a theory about why gold is performing poorly this summer despite so much global uncertainty, especially in China and Greece. What's your theory?
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
How to Identify a Classic Market Bubble / Stock-Markets / Liquidity Bubble
By: Michael_Pento
One of the most ironic and fascinating characteristics about an asset bubble is that central banks claim they can't recognize one until after it bursts. And Wall Street apologists tend to ignore the manifestation of bubbles because the profit stream is just too difficult to surrender.
The excuses for piling money into a particular asset class and sending prices several standard deviations above normal are made to seem rational at the time: Housing prices have never gone down on a national basis and people have to live somewhere, the internet will replace all brick and mortar stores, and perhaps the classic example is that variegated tulips are so rare they should be treated like gold.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Markets Macrocosm / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2015
By: Gary_Tanashian
Below is the opening segment of this week's edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 353. After this theoretical exercise we got down to nuts and bolts analysis, which provided logical 'bounce' targets (provided a bounce is indeed what is in play) for Gold, Silver and HUI, a compelling trend in the Commitments of Traders data and more talk about the trends that will need to be in place before a favorable macrocosmic environment is in place for the gold sector.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Blocks of U.S. Government Incompetence / Politics / Government Spending
By: James_Quinn
There were two accidents on the Schuylkill Expressway last Monday morning. You know what this meant. I had the pleasure of traveling to work on the scenic 30 Blocks of Squalor. The 30 blocks from 69th Street in Upper Darby to 39th Street in West Philly is a tribute to government incompetence, failed government policies, shoddy union labor practices and fiscal mismanagement.
This entire thirty block trek could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes if the hundreds of union government drones in the Philadelphia Streets Department would get off their fat asses and timed the lights. The blocks are identical in distance. They don't need advanced degrees in physics or calculus to set the lights to go green every ten seconds in order. They were timed in the 1970s and 1980s. Would smoothly flowing traffic be such a bad thing? Do they not care or are they really this incompetent? The first light at 61st Street was red when I arrived. It turned green and before you could touch the gas, it immediately turned yellow and red again. I wondered how long they'd allow this to go on. My guess would be days.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The Iran Nuclear Deal is Mostly about Oil / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: John_Browne
The recent nuclear non-proliferation agreement between Iran and the U.S. has created a firestorm debate in the Middle East and both sides of the Atlantic. While the deal is supposedly all about nuclear power and nuclear bombs, its practical implications are all about oil. But the conclusions we should make about its impact on the energy sector are far from clear. A ratification of the deal would allow Iran to make lucrative long term production and distribution contracts with foreign energy firms. However, freely flowing oil from Iran would add significant new oil supply into the world markets, disrupt U.S. plans to become an energy exporter, and could potentially put further downward pressure on prices.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Stock Market Bulls Beware! / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: Andre_Gratian
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend - Bull Market
Intermediate trend - SPX may have started an intermediate correction
Analysis of the short-term trend is done on a daily basis with the help of hourly charts. It is an important adjunct to the analysis of daily and weekly charts which discusses the course of longer market trends.
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Monday, July 27, 2015
Will Chinese Stock Market Crash Affect the US? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
US Equities are sliding following the overnight
Crash of the Chinese stock market. This is the second largest single day crash in Chinese stock market history as over 1500 companies are halted at limit down for the day. European stocks were bid lower, although of their lows for the day.
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Monday, July 27, 2015
Crude Oil Price Under $48! / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Nadia_Simmons
Trading position (short-term; our opinion): Short positions with a stop-loss order at $65.23 are justified from the risk/reward perspective.
On Friday, crude oil extended losses after bearish Baker Hughes report. As a result, light crude lost 1.82% and hit a fresh multi-month low. Where will the commodity head next in the coming days?
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Monday, July 27, 2015
Are We Seeing a Trend Reversal with U.S. Interest Rates? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Submissions
Frank Suess writes: In the second quarter, we saw a jump in yields across the board. The yield of 10-Year US Treasuries jumped from 1.9% to 2.4% over the course of the quarter, representing a yield increase of 50 bps. This led to a decline of almost 2% in the Bloomberg US Treasury Bond Index. In Europe the development was much more dramatic; over the quarter, the Bloomberg German Sovereign Bond Index lost around 4.5% in value. This was due to an increase in the German 10-Year yield from 0.2% to 0.8% (60 bps). It is not completely clear what sparked the massive yield increase in Europe. It might have been a technical correction due to the very high prices bonds were trading at, increased risk aversion towards Europe due to the situation in Greece (Bill Gross even called shorting German bunds "the short of a lifetime"), or possibly aggressive short positions by some investors.
Monday, July 27, 2015
How to Know When the Gold Bear Market is Over / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: ...
MoneyMorning.com
D.R. Barton, Jr writes: Gold’s hard-and-fast tumble below $1,100 an ounce last week means some investors may be tuning out the yellow metal or suffering from gold “burnout.”
But ignoring it is a huge mistake. It has been and always will be one of the best stores of value, and it's a crucial hedge against economic upheaval. It's a must-have holding.
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Monday, July 27, 2015
Is the Stock Market Tide Turning? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: Puru_Saxena
According to our methodology, the primary uptrend on Wall Street is still intact; however, we are starting to observe some troubling signs which suggest that we may be in the final innings of this bull market.
You will recall that for several months now, we have been stating that this remains a very split market with only half of the sectors participating in the ongoing advance. Accordingly, we have been suggesting that our readers only stay aligned with the leading stocks in the strongest areas and sectors. Given the price action of the past few trading sessions, we feel it is now absolutely essential to stay extremely disciplined and promptly eliminate any laggards from one’s investment portfolio.
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Monday, July 27, 2015
Gold Bear Market Phase III / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Submissions
Plunger writes: Over 2 years ago I presented my first analysis of this precious metals bear market. After extensive study of the characteristics of past bear markets, I forecast a brutal bear market that would undergo three psychological stages. The third stage would be a wrenching decline that would ultimately reach levels so shocking that it would cause the destruction of the gold investment class. My analysis, which was dubbed Plunger's Flush, was met not just with skepticism but outright derision. I believe I know how Galileo felt.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Today's Anti-Capitalists Ignore the Fundamental Problems of Socialism / Politics / Social Issues
By: MISES
Jonathan Newman writes: Anti-market and pro-socialist rhetoric is surging in headlines (see also here, here, and here) and popping up more and more on social media feeds. Much of the time, these opponents of markets can’t tell the difference between state-sponsored organizations like the International Monetary Fund and actual markets. But, that doesn’t matter because the articles and memes are often populist and vaguely worded — intentionally framed in such a way to easily deflect uninformed attacks and honest descriptions of what they are actually saying. In the end, they can all be boiled down to one message: socialism works and is better than capitalism.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Weary Investors Signal an Exhausted Stocks Bull Market / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: ...
MoneyMorning.com
Michael E. Lewitt writes: It was probably not a coincidence that stocks ended their worst week of the year on the same day that Hillary Clinton gave a speech outlining her capital gains tax proposals. Stocks didn't crater just because of the speech, but it sure didn't help.
As I noted in a Money Morning Special Broadcast sent out just after the speech on Friday, the Democratic presidential candidate proposed to double capital gains taxes on most investors. There was no mention in her speech of any desire to extinguish the egregious "carried interest" tax that allows her richest private equity donors to pay lower taxes than their secretaries. But her proposal was neither about showing political courage nor intelligent tax and economic policy.
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