Category: Financial Markets 2010
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Markets Vanish - 'In a Flash' / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
Following is a short excerpt from "War of the Nerds," which I wrote for the December, 2006, edition of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report. I discussed the crises an investor ("Our Serious Investor") navigated from the 1960s to the present. Doomsday had been predicted since the dollar crises of the 1960s, yet risk had been transient. By the fall of 2006, it was obvious the U.S. mortgage market and banking system were in collapse, but securities markets were deemed riskless, as measured by bond and credit-default spreads. It is timely to resurrect the vanishing bond markets of 1914 and 2007 after the failed or distressed auctions since December 27, 2010, of euro zone, Chinese, and U.S Treasury bonds with 5-year and 7-year maturities.
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Friday, December 31, 2010
Wall Street’s Push to Bring Back the Investing Public / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
Investors have been liquidating bonds in the last few weeks which begs the question why. Are investors liquidating bonds in order to move cash back into stocks and other risk assets? Or is that money going under the mattress? On that score a recent news article provides a most interesting backdrop to this question.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Trading The S&P 500, Oil, & Gold Without Forecasts / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
The end of 2010 is rapidly approaching and the pundits and commentators continue to make their 2011 market predictions. I for one believe predicting future market moves is a futile endeavor where if you are right one year later you are viewed as a sage; if you are wrong nobody seems to remember or care.
In fact, I try not to read any predictions for fear that it might place a bias in my subconscious. I am a trader and thus have no need for emotions, bias, or opinions when trading. I try to stay away from the media and the pundits as often as possible.
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Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Euro and Irish Banks Nationalization, Chinese interest rate hike the Grinch for Equities / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
Almost half of German companies see breakup of Euro region as a real threat and to make things worst Irish High Court has given the go ahead to the government to acquire Allied Irish bank without the consent of the shareholders! Dublin would now be injecting $4.8 billion into Allied Irish bank to raise its stake to 92% from 19% before. This is not the first bank/lender which Ireland has nationalized, it is the 4th lender now and Ireland’s Ministry of Finance had this to say “Allied Irish was Ireland’s largest company by market value in 2007 [which at its peak valued at 21 billion Euros] however, [now] the bank’s market capitalization is at 347 million Euros only and had the government not invested now then there would have been no Allied Irish bank on Jan 1st”. The stock would be delisted from the stock exchanges it is listed on and would be moved to the junior Irish bourse. So, in simple words the Allied stake holders are wiped clean out.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, December 27, 2010
Financial Markets Year End Signals, Q&A's / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones! The holidays are wonderful, and in a few days we have another one coming up — the start of a brand new year.
Now, please be sure you’re watching the year-end signals I gave you in my columns of November 22 and November 29. They’re effective for this Friday’s closing prices for those markets. They are very important and I will be referring to them as the new year unfolds.
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Monday, December 27, 2010
Rising stock prices may be self-sustaining, but rising commodity prices are self-limiting / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
The upswing in resource prices continues. From a fundamental perspective this is no surprise. As the US, Japan, and Europe pursue an unremittingly loose monetary policy, credit supply to the “real” economy is more or less stagnant. Therefore a lot of capital is available for speculation. In addition, growth rates (and the anticipated returns) in the emerging economic nations outpace those in the West, whereas the former consume relatively high quantities of commodities. Owing to various capital restrictions it has now become easier and cheaper to speculate on buoyant growth in the upcoming economies through the commodity markets. On top of this US growth is accelerating while resources are becoming more popular as an inflation hedge.
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Sunday, December 26, 2010
Global Stocks and Commodities Trotting / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
Let’s take a look at a variety of indexes, one commodity, and one commodity-related index
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Friday, December 24, 2010
Lessons Learned by Looking Back at 2010 / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
The year is winding down, and boy has it been an exciting and volatile one. Bonds. Currencies. Financial stocks. Some of the gyrations we’ve witnessed in those instruments over the past 12 months were enough to take your breath away …
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Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Profiting from Fed Policy / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
David Galland, Managing Director, Casey Research writes: These days, it’s hard to draw any conclusion other than that the train is gaining speed on wobbly tracks perched over a rickety bridge.
Most notably, unemployment has again risen – to 9.8% from 9.6% – very much not the direction things should be headed given the amount of money the government has pumped into the economy. The latest data shows that this nation of 310 million souls managed to add just 39,000 jobs in November. That, unfortunately, falls short of even keeping up with a population growth of about 1% – doing just that requires generating a net of about 250,000 jobs a month. As for eating away at the millions of unemployed and the many millions more who are underemployed… oh, well.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2010
I Figured Out How to Get Bullish on Stocks! / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
Just read the Wall Street Journal. On the front page we have "Nuclear Pact Adds Backers" above the fold along with a fluff piece on the weather in Europe. There are 3 other featured articles on the front page of the World’s most widely-read financial paper and one is a fluff piece on the Jimmy Stewart museum, one is on the obscure concept of betting people are going to die (very fun and interesting but "The World’s biggest financial paper"?) and the last is on the SEC looking into Mark Hurd’s exit from HP. On the left is "What’s News" with about 30 summaries of articles in the paper so one would think you could look this over and have a really good idea of what’s going on in the World.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Japan and Euro Problems, But Crude Oil Has No Problem / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
The Difficult Japanese Politics: We normally discuss about the popularity graph of the Japanese prime minister here at “marketprojection” that as time passes the slope of the curve almost always points lower but today however we discuss something different. Today it is the probable scandal issue which is turning the things for the worse in the ruling party.
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Monday, December 20, 2010
Bernanke’s Next Fed Created Treasury Bond Market Disaster / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
Last week the major market averages traded in a narrow range, with the S&P 500 trading between 1246 and 1234, as they appear to be taking a small pause in the rally. I think there is a good change that they will breakthrough this range before the end of this week and start another move higher and if they don't do it this week they almost certainly will next week.
Everyone knows that the market moves up at the end of the year and everyone is bullish right now.
Monday, December 20, 2010
…Risk On…Risk Off… / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
It doesn’t matter if you’re naughty or nice; Santa has been coming early to resource investors everywhere this year. A somewhat ironic combination of fear buying in precious metals and fearless buying in most everything else has generated gains across the sector this month.
In fact, the gains were good enough to have us checking the numbers on many development stories to make sure we were not wearing rose coloured glasses. We were mildly surprised to find that many stories looked, if not cheap, then at least like they still had headroom. That is a testament to just how good metal price moves were this month.
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Sunday, December 19, 2010
Greed Is Not Good, Financial Interests Dictate Sovereign Policy / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
With regards to the global financial crisis, imposing austerity is not the answer. That is like starving the slaves to improve their condition by making the plantation more profitable. Looting the 'great house' and the barns to feed the slaves, at least temporarily, is not the answer either. The problem is obviously in the system itself.
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Sunday, December 19, 2010
U.S. Dollar Rally is Still Concerning for Stocks and Commodities / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
As we head into the final two trading weeks of the year, the U.S. Dollar Index has completed two of the three steps typically associated with a change in trend: (1) the black trendline was broken, and (2) a higher low has been made. The third step would be to make a higher high via a daily close above 81.19.
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Saturday, December 18, 2010
Has the Stock Market Finally Run out of Steam? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
False Hope? U.S. Leading Indicators Index Increases by Most in 8 Months
(Bloomberg) The index of U.S. leading economic indicators increased in November by the most in eight months, a signal the recovery will strengthen early next year.
The Conference Board’s gauge of the outlook for the next three to six months rose 1.1 percent after a revised 0.4 percent gain in October, the New York-based group said today. The reading matched the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
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Friday, December 17, 2010
Crude Oil Futures Scam Continues Unabated / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
What a joke the oil market is!First of all, the NYMEX contracts for January delivery close on Tuesday and there are still 132,168 open contracts or 1,000 barrels each (132M) scheduled for delivery to Cushing, OK, a facility that can handle at most, 45Mb of crude and is, at the moment, full. The price of those barrels surged from $86.82 all the way back to our shorting target of $89 yesterday, where we once again had a nice ride down. Now, in pre markets, it is back over $89 again and we'll short it again so I'm not complaining about the action but I am upset that this blatant rip-off of the American consumer can go on right under our "leadership's" noses.
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Thursday, December 16, 2010
The Inverse U.S. Dollar Relationship, SPX and Fear / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
So far this week we have been seeing fear creep in the equities market. This Wednesday we started to see fear (green indicator) reach a level which tells me to start looking for the market to bottoming. I do follow a few other charts and indicators which warn me of a possible trend reversal (high probability setup) before it takes place but the US Dollar and selling volume are key.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
EURO, USD and Equities in light of No decision from FOMC / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
We had the OPEC meeting which went almost unnoticed and today we have the FOMC. Would there be any policy change or let’s just say would the post meeting communiqué shed light on any possibility of tightening? The answer is a resounding No! And anyone anywhere expecting otherwise has gotten it totally wrong. Same could also be said about further easing therefore at best this meeting shall be one where committee members meet, have a brief discussion session and then call it a day, as if it was a “get together”.
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Tuesday, December 14, 2010
U.S. Economy Still on Shaky Foundations, Gold Targets $1600 / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
In an innovative TV commercial for Barclays Bank, a man walks down on Wall Street but discovers that nearly everything is a fake movie set. The huge investment houses and international banks are all made of paintings on cloth or Styrofoam while the people are mannequins. The nightmare ended with the man finding one real bank which is Barclays Bank.
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