Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Best Time / Month of Year to BUY a USED Car is DECEMBER, UK Analysis / Personal_Finance / Motoring
By: Nadeem_Walayat
A google search soon reveals that the consensus view of the best times of year to buy a used car in the UK tend to coalesce around the two plate changes of the year, i.e. 1st of March and 1st September as being the most commonly propagated online advice to buy just before and after the plate changes. Next often repeated are the dealers end of quarter sales targets for bonuses and other perks, namely by the end of March, June, Sept and December. And also often mentioned are expectations that the best used car deals tend to be in the winter months due to less consumer demand.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Which Central Bank Will Go Under First When the Everything Bubble Bursts? / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Graham_Summers
In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, Central Banks began cornering the sovereign bond market via Zero or even Negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing (QE) programs.
The goal here was to reflate the financial system by pushing the “risk free rate” to extraordinary lows. By doing this, Central Bankers were hoping to:
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
New York Fed Inflation Gauge and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The New York Fed created a new inflation gauge. What does it mean for the gold market?
The standard inflation measures are the CPI and the PCEPI. They are useful indicators of changes in consumer prices. However, they omit producer prices, commodity prices, or asset prices. Hence, the central banks’ focus on consumer prices makes them blind to asset prices bubbles and the broad inflation pressure. This was the case of both the Great Depression and the Great Recession: the CPI was stable, so the Fed did not perceived its monetary policy as easy, despite the impressive rise in stock and real estate markets.
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
A Former Wall Street Veteran: Good Traders Are Born, Not Trained / Interest-Rates / Learn to Trade
By: John_Mauldin
BY JARED DILLIAN : Some people are better with money than others. Is it nature or nurture?
What I mean is: Can investing be taught, or does it come naturally?
I’m going to make a very controversial statement. Financial acumen is almost entirely nature. You are born with it.
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Buy Gold, Silver Time After Speculators Reduce Longs and Banks Reduce Shorts to Continue? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: GoldCore
– Gold and silver COT suggests bottoming and price rally coming
– Speculators cut way back on long positions and added to short bets
– Commercials/banks significantly reduced short positions
– Commercial net short position saw biggest one-week decline in COMEX history
– ‘Big 4’ commercial traders decreased their short positions by 28,800 contracts
– Seasonally, January is generally a good month to own gold (see table)
– “If history is still reliable, January will be a great month to own precious metals”
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
2017 Was a Roller Coaster Year For UK Savers / Personal_Finance / Savings Accounts
By: MoneyFacts
As we come close to the end of 2017, the latest research from moneyfacts.co.uk shows it has been a roller coaster year for savers. Savings rates fell to record lows for various fixed bonds in January and for variable rates in February, but thankfully as the end of the year draws near, rates in both areas have improvement immensely.
Fixed rates have risen considerably this year, with the average five-year bond hitting 2.03%, its highest level since July 2016 when it was 2.05%. The short-term bonds have also recovered to the extent that today, the average one-year bond stands at 1.17%, its highest point since July 2016 when it was 1.20%.
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Will Gold and Diamonds Rival Bitcoin in Tokenized Economy? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Nicholas_Kitonyi
Whenever I look at the Bitcoin price chart, it makes no sense and that means investors no longer move the market, but rather, the market moves them. If the prices are skyrocketing, instead of sitting back and looking at what’s behind the rally, they are now joining the bandwagon without taking a second to think.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Masters of Economic and Political Illusion – in Taxes, Debt, Government, and Markets / Politics / US Politics
By: Raymond_Matison
We are a gullible people, and have become more so with the evolution and development of ever more persuasive propaganda. We accept many commonly popular economic or political “established facts” as truth almost without question. We forget or are ignorant of the fact that there are large well financed organizations in whose interest it is to provide us with information and views that will polarize our own thinking and values to parallel those of these powerful influences. In effect we are provided with the scaffolding for an illusion which we fill in according to our own personal, but mainstream media propaganda and other organization-channeled input. In creating such illusions it seems appropriate to paraphrase President Reagan’s comment: it’s not that we are ignorant, but that we know so much that simply isn’t so.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Approved Used Land Rover Main Dealer Real Customer Buying Guide - Hunters, Chester / Personal_Finance / Land Rover
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Thinking of buying an 'approved used' Land Rover Discovery Sport (HSE Black) or any of the range rover models? Then here is what a 'real' customer can expect when buying from a main dealer. This video illustrates the process a typical buyer can expect from a Land Rover dealer (Hunters) from as soon as one drives onto the dealerships forecourt, test driving, documentation, part exchanging, paperwork, insuring, taxing and payment, all the way to when one drives off with their car a few hours later. The 'REAL' experience of what to expect over the 'approved used' sales pitch list of x,y,z, which does not quite pan out in reality.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Our MSCI ETF Forecast BEFORE the 47 Percent, 12-Month Gain / Companies / Company Chart Analysis
By: EWI
Our MSCI ETF Forecast BEFORE the 47 Percent, 12-Month Gain
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Gold Price 100% Bullish Signal / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: P_Radomski_CFA
During yesterday’s week, we saw breakdowns and major declines in all parts of the precious metals sector. Even the HUI to gold ratio broke below the key low. Yet, there is something that we saw based on last week’s closing prices that had 100% bullish efficiency in the past few years. What is it and how we can use this knowledge?
Before moving to the details of the above bullish sign, let’s check what changed in gold (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Epic Stock Market & Fixed Income Bubble Will Not End Well / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Michael_Pento
Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in Michael Pento, President and founder of Pento Portfolio Strategies and author of the book, The Coming Bond Market Collapse: How to Survive the Demise of the U.S. Debt Market. Michael is a well-known and successful money manager and has been a regular guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business News, and also the Money Metals Podcast, and shares is astute insights on markets and geopolitics from the perspective of an Austrian School economist's viewpoint.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Soaring Deficits Force US Treasury into Foolish Debt Gamble / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Michael_Pento
The Treasury opened the fiscal year 2018 with an October budget deficit of $63.2 billion. That is 37.9% larger than the $45.8 billion deficit in October of last year. The primary reason behind this surge in year-over-year deficits was a 21.6% increase in net interest expenses. The annual red-ink problem looks even greater when recognizing that the national debt is already over 105% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), at nearly $21 trillion, and with an additional $10 trillion projected to be added in the next ten years.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Amazon’s 75,000 New Robots Are Your Answer To No Wage Inflation / Companies / Amazon
By: John_Mauldin
Like millions of other people, I am a fan and a user of Amazon.
They do make buying things convenient, especially little things that you might have to go to art specialty stores to find. I’m a huge user of the Kindle app, too.
I will admit that I don’t quite understand the Amazon business model of growth over profits. But I have noticed that most of the profits Amazon actually makes are coming from their non-commercial side—stuff like cloud services.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Bitcoin can be stolen. Although Can’t be hacked / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Dr. D: Bitcoin can be stolen. Although “Bitcoin” can’t be hacked, it’s only software and has many vulnerabilities. If held on an exchange, you have legal and financial risk. If held at home, you could have a hard drive fail and lose your passwords. If it’s on a hardware fob like a Trezor, the circuits could fail. For a robust system, computers themselves are pretty fragile. You could write down your passwords on paper, and have a house fire. You could print out several copies, but if any of the copies are found, they have full access to your account and stolen without you knowing. You could have your passwords stolen by your family, or have a trojan take a screen or keystroke capture.
Monday, December 11, 2017
UK Mortgage Providers Giving SVR Borrowers a Reprieve / Housing-Market / Mortgages
By: MoneyFacts
Moneyfacts UK Mortgage Trends Treasury Report data, not yet published, highlights that the average standard variable rate (SVR) has increased since the base rate rise on 2 November, as expected. Despite this, it falls short of the anticipated 0.25% rise, instead increasing by 0.14%.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Have Stocks Reached A Permanently Rigged Plateau? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Brady_Willett
A painting recently sold for a record $450 million, a blanket recently sold for $1.5 million, Bitcoin has gone ballistic, and Cramer thinks there are ‘bubbles’ everywhere except stocks. Are these the types of signals that bears have been waiting for? In a word, maybe.
The problem with calling for an end to the good times is that there has been so many false contrarian signals in recent years it is as if the very idea of “risk/reward” has been temporarily laid to waste. To use a quick example, in early 2016 alarm bells were ringing as junk bonds were imploding, confidence was sliding, and technical market levels were being struck. At the time it looked like the big bad bull was done.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Trying To Beat The System Is A Fatally Flawed Investment Strategy / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Submissions
Bill Cara writes: This week’s article will begin with a parable. Soon, however, this piece of fiction might become source material for a Harvard Business School case study.
So, recently there was a private members club with 99 men and women who had each paid $1,000 to join. At the first monthly meeting, somebody suggested it would be a good idea to top off membership at 100, so the call went out to their friends. Lo and behold, one person stepped up with an offer of $1,500 and the capital account grew to $100,500. The next month however another individual offered $2,000 to join and the members were elated to grow their numbers to 101 with the capital account now up to $102,500. Nobody complained the following month when another individual came forward with $2,500 to join, bringing membership to 102 and the capital account to $105,000. As the months flew by, there was always one more person who wanted to join, and the offers were up to $3,000, $4,000, and $5,000 in months 4, 5 and 6. The original members became giddy and decided to set the price higher by $1,000 each month, and each month a new member joined at the posted price. After a year, the membership was up to 111 and the members actually believed their memberships were worth $11,000 and so they valued their club at $1,221,000, putting it up for sale.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Is This The Beginning Of The Next Silver Rush? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: OilPrice_Com
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Monday, December 11, 2017
The Dow Gold Ratio / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Rambus_Chartology
This next set of ratio charts I consider to be the most important ratio charts if you are deciding whether to be an investor in the INDU or in Gold.
When the price is rising The INDU ( Dow Jones Industrial Average ) (a proxy for General Stock Markets) is rising against Gold , and when it is falling Gold is rising against the Dow.
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