Tuesday, October 09, 2018
ECB Meeting Minutes and US Inflation Data in Focus / Economics / Inflation
We don’t have a central bank meeting scheduled for this week, but we get the minutes of the latest ECB one. Following the upbeat remarks of President Draghi at the conference following that meeting, it will be interesting to see whether other ECB officials are on the same page. In the US, we have the CPIs for September. We get inflation data from Norway and Sweden as well.
Monday appears to be a quiet day in terms of economic releases. The only noteworthy data point we have on the calendar is German industrial production for August, which is expected to have rebounded 0.4% mom after sliding 1.1% in July.
On Tuesday, during the Asian morning, we get Australia’s NAB business survey for September. Although this is usually not a market mover, given the RBA’s emphasis on wage growth, we will take a close look at the Labour Costs sub-index. At its last two meetings, the Bank reiterated that wage growth remains low, but removed the part saying that this is likely to continue. Instead, officials noted that it has picked up a little and that further lift is expected. The NAB Labour Costs index accelerated to +1.3% qoq in the three months to August, from 0.9% in the three months to July and it would be interesting to see whether this improvement will continue as the RBA has suggested.
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Tuesday, October 09, 2018
Will Crude Oil Follow Historical Patterns? / Commodities / Crude Oil
Our research team, at Technical Traders Ltd., has been very interested in Oil recently as the current rally appears to have rotated lower near a top. Our predictive modeling systems, predictive cycle analysis and other tools suggest Oil/Energy may be setting up for a downward price trend. This may be an excellent opportunity for skilled traders to identify profitable trades as this trend matures.
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Tuesday, October 09, 2018
Interest Rate Shock-Time to Find Out Who has been Swimming Naked / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2018
What Happened?
Could everything have changed in a 24 hour period? Apparently, Yes, Over the span of 24 hours markets woke up and realized that the FED may be at the cusp of committing Policy Error. Recently bonds have been teetering on the edge and this week Jerome Powell gave bonds a push off the ledge. Bonds delivered a message and the stock market was listening. Stocks got derailed along with bonds.
Yields blew out and sucked the air out of the stock market. So why the big move in bonds? Two reasons:
- Less demand for LT bonds due to the higher cost of hedging caused by higher yields, higher USD and emerging markets dropping.
- FED Chair Powell advertising he plans on being very aggressive with rates. He plans on raising rates until something breaks.
Tuesday, October 09, 2018
Unintended Consequences of Expanding Sheffield's Best Ranking State Secondary Schools / Local / Sheffield
Sheffield's parents and their children have just 9 days left to submit their online secondary school place applications before the 18th October noon deadline, failing which they will have to submit a paper application to be delivered to by the 31st October. So it's better to deal with the submissions now to avoid missing these critical deadlines and thus being subject to ones child being placed in an out of catchment area school. Especially as demand for Sheffield best state schools remains extremely high, with all of the top ranking schools heavily over subscribed.
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Tuesday, October 09, 2018
Crude Oil Price Trend Forecast 2018 Update / Commodities / Crude Oil
This is an update to my crude oil price trend forecast for 2018. So firstly a recap of my forecast for for 2018 which since the start of this year has been for the oil price to target a trend to $80.
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Tuesday, October 09, 2018
The Gold Standard: Protector of Individual Liberty and Economic Prosperity / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
The idea of a constitution and/or written legislation to secure individual rights so beloved by conservatives and among many libertarians has proven to be a myth. The US Constitution and all those that have been written and ratified in its wake throughout the world have done little to protect individual liberties or keep a check on State largesse. Instead, in the American case, the Constitution created a powerful central government which eliminated much of the sovereignty and independence that the individual states possessed under the Articles of Confederation.
While the US Constitution contains a “Bill of Rights,” the interpreter of those rights and protections thereof is the very entity which has enumerated them. It is only natural that decisions on whether, or if such rights have been violated will be in favor of the state. Moreover, nearly every amendment which has come in the wake of the Bill of Rights, has augmented federal power at the expense of the individual states and that of property owners.
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Monday, October 08, 2018
Inflation Is Starting To Heat Up / Commodities / Commodities Trading
For years now analysts, and the media have been trying to convince everyone there is no inflation despite central banks massive quantitative easing programs. Of course this is ridiculous. They just choose to ignore where the inflation has manifested.
In 2008 inflation spiked in the commodity markets contributing to the severity of the last recession. One could even make a strong case inflation was the main cause of the recession. From 2011 until recently inflation has focused mostly in asset markets, especially the stock market. But it’s also appeared in healthcare, housing prices, insurance premiums, education, etc. So to claim there has been no inflation one has to willfully turn a blind eye to where the inflation is. We’ve actually had massive inflation, it’s just that it has run mostly in sectors that people don’t mind seeing inflation, namely the stock market. I think that is about to change.
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Monday, October 08, 2018
Stock Market Seasonal Influence at Work / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend – The bull market is continuing with a top expected in the low 3000s.
Intermediate trend – Correction in progress.
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, October 08, 2018
Barrick Randgold Deal Breathes New Life into Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
Despite having a rough summer, with a number of factors pushing gold below $1,200 an ounce (the high dollar, US economic growth, interest rate hikes, booming stock markets), the precious metal appears to be back in favor, with December gold futures closing Tuesday’s trading at $1,207 an ounce - a two-week high. In 10 minutes, Bloomberg reported, December gold contracts equal to 1.57 million ounces changed hands on the Comex in New York - almost 12 times the 100-day average volume at that time of day. The catalyst was fresh safe-haven demand owing to political uncertainty in Italy. A government official reportedly said Italy would be better off with its own currency, adding to doubts about the country’s fiscal situation. The EU has to pass Italy’s budget and many think it won’t cut the mustard.
“An IMF Financial Statistics Report reveals that Egypt recently bought gold for the first time since 1978, and that India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines have re-entered the gold market after years-long absences. And Bloomberg reported that the Bank of Mongolia has purchased 12.2 tonnes of gold so far this year.
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Monday, October 08, 2018
Stock Market Sell Off, Dollar Rally Expected, Now What? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
This has been a most difficult stock and precious metals market to forecast. I am fortunate to have made my clients over 18% the past 6 weeks. Yesterday, I went to cash after having cashed my volatility (UVXY), short GDX (DUST) and short SPX (SPXS) ETF.The VIX futures went into backwardation Friday, and the last two times this occurred was February 2, 2018 and August 21, 2016. The next trading day took the SPX down about 4% on each occasion. We have had horrible internals and the momentum indicators have not confirmed the recent topping action, so anything is possible.
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Monday, October 08, 2018
The Chartology of Gold and Silver / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Several weeks ago we looked at some resistance points for gold and silver from the short to the longer term time perspective. Below is a daily chart for gold which starts with the 2018 five point rectangle reversal pattern which broke down in May. The backtest to the underside of the five point rectangle took about five weeks to complete, forming a bearish rising wedge. From that point the impulse move down began in earnest stopping in mid July to form a small rectangle. After trading sideways for about three weeks gold broke down from that small rectangle and finally bottomed in mid August where it began a countertrend rally.
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Monday, October 08, 2018
The Income for Life Playbook / Personal_Finance / Investing 2018
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Sunday, October 07, 2018
Stock Market Breaking Down After Long Uptrend. More short-term Weakness Ahead? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Perspective is important. After a very steady rally over the past 3 months, the U.S. stock market is finally starting to “break down”. But before you panic, realize that this “break down” is very small in the grand scheme of themes. Some traders are looking for a retest of the 200 day moving average.
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Sunday, October 07, 2018
The Latest Double Standard from the Fed / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
Collectively, we just got screwed again, and I bet most people didn’t even know it. It happens so many times, particularly at the hands of the Federal Reserve, it’s hard to keep track.A new bank called The Narrow Bank, or TNB, recently applied for an account with the Fed.
This would give the bank recognition by a local reserve bank, in this case New York, and access to its services, like distribution of currency, check processing and other forms of electronic payments.
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Sunday, October 07, 2018
Looking at the “New NAFTA” Trade Agreement / Stock-Markets / Global Economy
Well, this is getting exciting!We just got an agreement this morning with Canada and Mexico to replace NAFTA, which has driven the markets higher.
I thought the Trump-induced trade war with China would have resolved by now as well. At the beginning of the summer I forecast that the president would talk big, beat on a couple of trade partners with some tariffs, then quickly reach a negotiated truce and claim victory.
It hasn’t turned out that way.
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Sunday, October 07, 2018
One More Bounce for the Gold Price / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
You know by now that I think gold is above all a commodity, and in a bubble that was more extreme than stocks… a bubble that’s been bursting since September 2011, but…Gold and bitcoin are two examples of bubbles bursting that are NOT following my bubble model as well as most. Both, thus far, are basing out at higher levels than I expected.
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Sunday, October 07, 2018
Where Have the Affordable Homes Gone? / Housing-Market / US Housing
Bubbles are self-defeating. Their success is what eventually kills them.The same is true for cycles.
Take the urbanization cycle for example…
As a population urbanizes, people get wealthier. But more affluent urbanites have fewer kids and that slows future demographic growth for the next generation.
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Sunday, October 07, 2018
Impact of FOBT Regulation: Online Gaming Shares / Companies / Gambling
Fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) have become a hot topic for UK gaming operators over the last two years. Following protests by anti-gambling advocates, the government initiated a full review of the betting shop gaming machines at the end of 2017. At the heart of the debate was the amount players were able to bet. Under the regulations at the time, players could wager a maximum of £100 per round.
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Saturday, October 06, 2018
How Commodities Will Perform in the 'Impending Massive Credit Crunch' / Commodities / Commodities Trading
Technical analyst Clive Maund looks at the factors that he sees are behind a massive credit crunch and discusses how the markets could react. An enormous "sword of Damocles" hangs over all markets now. A massive liquidity drain is underway as global QE reverses into QT and rates rise against the background of immense ubiquitous crippling debt burdens. What this means is that the biggest credit crunch of all time is bearing down on us, which will involve markets crashing in the absence of bids, serious dislocation of capital markets and out of control interest rates.
This is probably the high point for Trump's presidency as the stock market enjoys its final "swansong rally" ahead of the crash, buoyed up the last of the stock buybacks before rising rates choke them off, and the dumbest of the dumb money who think that because the market has been in an uptrend for years it's going to continue.
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Saturday, October 06, 2018
Gold Stocks Recovering / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
The battered gold miners’ stocks are finally starting to recover after a rough few months. Their prices slid with gold in July, plummeted in a brutal forced capitulation in August, and then dropped again in an echo capitulation into mid-September. That left them at fundamentally-absurd price levels wildly disconnected from their actual profitability, leaving this sector with big mean-reversion upside ahead as it bounces back.
The leading gold-stock investment vehicle and increasingly benchmark is the GDX VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF. As of this week it still had $8.5b of net assets even at today’s super-depressed gold-stock prices. That dwarfs everything else in the 1x-long major-gold-miners ETF space, running 40.5x bigger than its next largest competitor! So GDX is the dominant proxy for the fortunes of the gold miners’ stocks.
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