Monday, December 18, 2017
Balance Transfer Fees Fall to Lowest Level in Over a Decade / Personal_Finance / Credit Cards & Scoring
By: MoneyFacts
The quarterly Moneyfacts UK Credit Card Trends Treasury Report (recently published), which studies the UK personal finance market, highlights that the average balance transfer fee has fallen to reach the lowest level seen in over a decade.
At a time when the length of interest-free balance transfers faces scrutiny, it appears that providers are finding alternative ways to entice borrowers. As a result, the average balance transfer fee has hit 2.03%, down from 2.11% in September and 2.29% a year ago. The current average is the lowest seen since it hit 1.82% in October 2006.
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Monday, December 18, 2017
UK Used Car Christmas From Dealers Buying Discount Sales Bargains / Personal_Finance / Money Saving
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.
Monday, December 18, 2017
How To Play The 2018 Cannabis Boom / Companies / Cannabis
By: OilPrice_Com
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Monday, December 18, 2017
Should You Consider Investing/ Buying Gold or Bitcoin? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Recently, we have been asked by a number of clients about the precious metals and what our advice would be with regards to buying, selling or holding physical or trading positions in the metals. There are really only a few short and simple answers to this question and they are revolve around the concept of providing a hedge against risk, capital preservation and opportunity for returns. Let's explore the details a bit further.
Monday, December 18, 2017
Gold EFPs: Absolute Proof that the Paper Gold Price is a Fraud / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Stewart_Dougherty
In recent months, the issuance of gold Exchange for Physical (EFP) contracts has surged. EFPs convert a physically deliverable Comex gold contract into an LBMA or LME contract supposedly deliverable at a later date ex London and/or Hong Kong. As an incentive for Comex contract holders to accept EFPs, a cash bonus reportedly is paid. EFPs in silver are also being issued in vast quantities, but we will focus on gold for brevity.
Most gold market observers believe that EFPs are a Comex gimmick designed to prevent, or at least forestall a formal Comex delivery failure. We believe the full story behind the EFPs is more complicated and disturbing, and that it involves collusion, conspiracy, and fraud.
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Monday, December 18, 2017
Explaining My Amazement About Those Turning Bullish On The Banking Sector Now / Companies / Banking Stocks
By: Avi_Gilburt
Recent price action
With the Nasdaq continuing higher this past week, it has now reached our minimum target we were looking for before a pullback may be seen. But, I think the XLF may be providing us with certain clues about how 2018 may turn out. And, it may not be as rosy as many believe. Well, at least the first half of the year.
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Monday, December 18, 2017
Gold – Technical Obfuscation, Fundamentals, Predictions / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: Kelsey_Williams
It is pretty much expected today that any investment analysis with justifiable conclusions will be steeped in technical study that includes lots of charts.
This seems especially true of gold.
Which is all well and good, I suppose; except for the obfuscation:
Obfuscation is the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language. The obfuscation might be either unintentional or intentional (although intent usually is connoted), and is accomplished with circumlocution (talking around the subject), the use of jargon (technical language of a profession), and the use of an argot (ingroup language) of limited communicative value to outsiders.[1]
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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Gold And Silver Futures Swing From Bearish To Bullish In Just Two Weeks / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: John_Rubino
After holding onto huge, unprofitable long positions for months, gold and silver futures speculators are finally giving up and bailing out, while commercial traders (who take the opposite side of these trades, since every long requires an offsetting short) are closing out their shorts at a near-record pace.
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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Stock Market Final Thrust is Likely / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Andre_Gratian
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend – The bull market is continuing with no sign of a major top in sight.
Intermediate trend –Final top next week?
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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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Nader Explains the Ongoing Collapse of the Democratic Party / Politics / US Politics
By: Jesse
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right." John Kenneth Galbraith
The last presidential election was obviously, and by choice of the parties, a contest between the lesser of two evils. The Democratic candidate was the choice of the party insiders, and the Republican of people who had just had enough, and were willing to believe the unabashed nonsense of a conman in their desperation.
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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Bitcoin Smashes Through $18k… and Now $19k As Insane Jim Cramer’s “Kibosh” Threat All Hot Air / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Jeff_Berwick
Many people thought that once bitcoin futures began trading on the CBOE that it would allow Wall Street to smash the price of bitcoin lower.
Or, as Jim Cramer said, “kibosh” bitcoin.
Of course, if you listen to anything Jim Cramer has to say, well chances are you’ve lost a lot of money.
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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Never Mind Tea Leaves, Here’s a Strong Signal from the Economic Dashboard / Economics / US Economy
By: F_F_Wiley
We’ve been seeing more and more commentaries discussing bad stuff that can happen when the Fed tightens policy and, as a result, the yield curve flattens. (See, for example, this piece from Citi Research and ZeroHedge.) No doubt, the Fed’s rate hikes will lead to mishaps as they usually do—in both markets and the economy. But most forecasters expect the economy to expand through next year, believing that the Fed and the yield curve aren’t yet restrictive enough to trigger a recession.
Sunday, December 17, 2017
As Bitcoin Breaks All-Time Highs Near $18,000 Its Future Has Never Been So Uncertain / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Jeff_Berwick
Bitcoin has yet again hit another all-time high today of $17,645.89 on the Coindesk Price Index.
Yet, while much of the traditional financial world are piling into bitcoin, the direction of bitcoin has perhaps never been so unsure.
I’ve posited my conspiracy theory of how Blockstream and others may have surreptitiously hijacked bitcoin. But, whether that is the case or not, one thing is absolutely for sure; Bitcoin has changed dramatically in the last year from its initial intention and objectives as outlined by Satoshi’s white paper.
The title of the white paper itself, after all, was “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”
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Saturday, December 16, 2017
Best Time / Month to Buy a Used Car From a UK Dealer / ConsumerWatch / Motoring
By: Nadeem_Walayat
So far 2017 has not proved to be a productive year in terms of my traditional market analysis i.e. stocks, commodities and derivatives, as I tend to analyse that which grabs my attention rather than following a pre-set schedule, and for this year my attention has been on non traditional markets such as politics, where we had BrExit rammed down our throats to exhaustion point, culminating in the June 8th election disaster and its aftermath. Nevertheless my market analysis has continued this year, unfortunately it's been in non traditional markets such as the local city housing markets rather than national or international, and in this analysis of the UK near new Used car market of 2017 so as determine the best time of year to buy a Used Car of less than 3 years age from a UK dealer.
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Relief Rally in Gold Mining Stocks / Commodities / Gold & Silver Stocks 2017
By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne
In recent days the gold stocks (GDX, GDXJ) traded within 1% of our downside targets of GDX $21.00 and GDXJ $29.50. Last week we wrote: “the miners are getting oversold and a bounce could begin from those levels.” GDXJ troughed first last week at $29.84 while GDX printed a low of $21.27 on Monday. From their September peaks down to those lows, GDX and GDXJ had declined nearly 17% and 21% respectively. They are oversold, nearly touched good support and now the rate hike is behind them. We expect a rally in the sector well into January.
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Amid Bad Fundamentals, Gold Sector Rally May Have Begun / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Gary_Tanashian
We have been expecting a seasonal rally in gold, silver and the miners off of a bottom due in either December or January, as is typical of the sector. I’ve marked up Sentimentrader‘s seasonal gold pattern to show the secondary low made (on average over 30 years) in December and the January ramp up that follows (on average).
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Gold Bullish on US Fed Interest Rate Hike / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Zeal_LLC
Gold has been battered lower in recent months as gold-futures speculators fled in dread of the Fed-rate-hike boogeyman. As universally expected, the Fed’s 5th rate hike of this cycle indeed came to pass this week. When gold didn’t collapse as irrationally feared, the cowering futures traders were quick to start returning. Past Fed rate hikes have actually proven very bullish for gold, and this latest one will be no exception.
Back in early September, gold was sitting pretty near $1348. It had rallied dramatically out of its usual summer-doldrums low in its typical major autumn rally, blasting 11.2% higher in just 2.0 months. But even way back then, Fed-rate-hike fears for the FOMC’s December 13th meeting started creeping in. When gold peaked on September 7th, federal-funds futures implied December rate-hike odds running just 32%.
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Saturday, December 16, 2017
The LORAX Explains What Happened to Sheffield's Street Trees 2017 / Local / Sheffield
By: Anika_Walayat
We are the LORAX and we speak for the trees and I'd like to say a few words if you please, regarding the story your about to see it actually happened just take it from me. BUt there is more to this story than whats on a page so please pay attention whilst I set the stage. We open in Sheffield a city they say that was made of steel and coal and they liked it that way. A town hall without nature, not one living green , so what happened to our trees, cue the music lets see....
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Land Rover Discovery Sport Fuel Tank Litres Capacity Test / ConsumerWatch / Motoring
By: HGR
There is conflicting information online on the capacity of the Land Rover Discovery Sport's fuel tanks, which tend to range from as high as 70 litres to as low as 50 litres, so we undertook a test by filling up a HSE Black to confirm the actual fuel capacity of these cars as the video illustrates.
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Bitcoin Trading Alert: Bitcoin Pauses – Will Appreciation Follow? / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Mike_McAra
Bitcoin was directly mentioned during Janet Yellen’s last scheduled conference as Fed chair. On CoinDesk, we read:
Yellen, whose term in office expires in February, spoke to reporters today on a range of topics. About thirty minutes into the presser, Yellen was asked about bitcoin.
She noted that, in the Fed's view, bitcoin "plays a very small role" in the U.S. payment system, going on to explain:
"It is not a stable store of value and it doesn't constitute legal tender. It is a highly speculative asset and the Fed doesn't really play any role, any regulatory role with respect to bitcoin other than assuring that banking organizations that we do supervise are attentive that they're appropriately managing any interactions they have with participants in that market, and appropriately monitoring anti-money laundering [and] Bank Secrecy Act responsibilities that they have."