Monday, March 23, 2020
Could the Coronavirus Cause the Next ‘Arab Spring’? / Politics / Pandemic
By: Richard_Mills
The rich are getting richer, inequality is on the rise, and the middle class, the backbone of the US economy since the 1950s, is shrinking.
In 2018 the three highest-paid chief executives in the United States earned more than the output of several countries. Tesla’s Elon Musk, Brendan Kennedy, the CEO of pot success story Tilray, and Bob Eger, the boss of Walt Disney Co., made a combined $914 million, more than each of 11 countries that rank among the poorest in the world.
Celebrities are also raking it in like never before. In 2018 Taylor Swift earned $185 million, Argentinian soccer star Lionel Messi scored $127 million including $35M in endorsements, Mexican boxer Canelo Alvarez earned $94 million, and Swiss tennis star Roger Federer pocketed a cool $93.4 million.
Star athletes, Hollywood elites, politicians, the rich, all can get tested for coronavirus before the rest of us (and get back tests in a very timely manner). We working class peasants get sent home, no test done, told to ‘self isolate.’ President Trump, when asked about this said ‘That’s life.’ Indeed it is.
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Monday, March 23, 2020
Concerned About The US Real Estate Market? Us Too! / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Chris_Vermeulen
The current global Covid-19 virus event has upended everyone’s forward expectations related to the US and global economy. Recently, President Trump has announced a 12-month reprieve for homeowners who find themselves without income, or a job, because of the US National Emergency related to the Covid-19 pandemic (source: https://www.npr.org).
All of the recent repositionings of the global markets and forward expectations got us thinking about “what happens after 8 to 12+ months? How will the US and global markets attempt a recovery process – if at all?”. Today, we are going to try to start digging into the data that we believe is relevant to the future in terms of hard asset prices (home and other property) and more liquid asset prices (global financial markets).
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Sunday, March 22, 2020
Gold Stocks Peak Bleak? / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2020
By: Gary_Tanashian
Peak Oil? That was an obvious and widespread promotion while it was in play and did not fool anyone who bothered to step aside from the herd that ran with it.
Peak Terror in broad stock markets? Well, that I don’t discount so readily because this is a system that was a debt-bloated accident waiting for the trigger that turned out to be COVID-19. Terrified casino patrons will pray that the Fed’s bullets are not duds because that is the only way out. That and the still-intact mass confidence in the Keynesian debt scheme that the Fed operates within.
SPX has tanked to the 38% Fib (not annotated on the chart) of the entire policy-manufactured bull market from 2009. While I think there is a big time rally out there ahead somewhere, there is fundamental reason to question the very makings of the bull market and how effective more of those same makings will be. Well before COVID-19 we had SPX due for a manic sentiment blow off and downside reversal. Now the opposite sentiment, Peak Terror, has been slammed into place.
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Sunday, March 22, 2020
UK Supermarkets Coronavirus Panic Buying, Empty Tesco Shelves, Stock Piling, Hoarding Preppers / Politics / Pandemic
By: N_Walayat
Here's what it's like to shop at a big supermarket such as Tesco during the coronavirus pandemic panic of 2020 after the shelves have been cleared by selfish stock piling and hoarding. What are people going to do with trolleys stuffed full of toilet rolls? Are they going to sell them on ? or into toilet paper art?
We tried to shop at our local Tesco store in Sheffield. First issue was that the shelves were 70% empty. Second issue was of the crap that's left you could only buy 2 or 3 items. Third issue was the checkout staff did not follow their own rules i.e. customers were supposed to be allowed to buy 2 packs, but they kept one of the 2 rolls we took Fourth issue is the Tesco Clubcard Big shops are worthless as you can't be £200 worth of stock anymore to get your maximum 10% off.
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Saturday, March 21, 2020
US Coronavirus Infections and Deaths Going Ballistic as Government Start to Ramp Up Testing / Politics / Pandemic
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The penny finally appears to have dropped in the US! Where even uber skeptic President Trump has finally had someone read the writing on the wall to him, with the US appearing to start to swing firmly in the right direction, though as the following graph illustrates the damage is likely already done, so the US WILL pay a heavy price for Presidential & Congressional Governmental and CDC NEGLIGENCE that borders on CRIMINAL. Where the US wasted THE WHOLE OF FEBRUARY! The US could have nipped this in the bud as I repeatedly suggested was possible during February, but instead supreme arrogance in monitoring and capability reigned supreme until the stock market started discounting the trend trajectories that were starting to unfold. Remember that the stock market DISCOUNTS the future, it's not going to wait for 100,000 deaths before it nose dives as we have witness take place these past 2 weeks.
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Saturday, March 21, 2020
Your Investment Portfolio for the Next Decade—Fix It with the “Anti-Stock” / Portfolio / Investing 2020
By: Jared_Dillian
For months—years—I’ve been extolling the virtues of portfolios that are primarily comprised of bonds. Especially in retirement.
Bonds provide necessary diversification. They may end up reducing returns, but you are more than compensated by the reduction in risk.
A few months ago, people were giving me a lot of grief about this. I heard all about how irresponsible it was to promote bonds in a low interest rate environment. Then interest rates went even lower, as stocks went down a lot.
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Saturday, March 21, 2020
CORONA HOAX: This Is Almost Completely Contrived and Here’s Proof / Politics / Pandemic
By: Jeff_Berwick
It seems like not a day passes by now without some new development in this over-sensationalized corona hoax.
The fact that it’s being so played up is obvious when you look at the numbers. As you can see in the supposedly accurate statistics below, the virus has caused just under 9,000 deaths.
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Saturday, March 21, 2020
Gold-Silver Ratio Tops 100; Silver Headed For Sub-$10 / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
By: Kelsey_Williams
It doesn’t seem to matter what the ratio of gold to silver is, or how high it goes. Those who prefer silver always seem to think it’s going to reverse “soon”.
It might; maybe significantly so, too. But it doesn’t mean a thing. There are no fundamental reasons for the ratio to move up or down at any given time.
Actually, there is no reason to track it, either. Except that those who love silver think it is correlated in some way with gold; its not. And that silver is cheap relative to gold (it is), so it must be a better buy (its not).
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Saturday, March 21, 2020
Coronavirus - Don’t Ask, Don’t Test / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2020
By: John_Mauldin
My friend Ben Hunt wrote two weeks ago that we were in a period of “don’t ask, don’t test.” He has been extremely critical, and rightly so, about the slow response in getting tests available.
When we actually start testing at scale, I suspect we will find a lot of people have the coronavirus. My extremely informed sources consider it quite reasonable to expect 100,000 people in the US will test positive in a relatively short time.
The mainstream media will breathlessly report each increase and their locations and what is happening at the local hospitals. How do you think people will respond as the number of cases approaches 100,000 with no sign of slowing?
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Saturday, March 21, 2020
Napag and Napag Trading Best Petroleum & Crude Oil Company / Companies / Oil Companies
By: Sumeet_Manhas
These days there are many trading companies that do the business of petroleum products and petroleum through the globe. But not all are good suppliers or rather, in other words, the original supplier of crude oil and refined petroleum products. The one and only Napag and Napag Trading are the one’s which products are in the business of crude oil and refined petroleum products. They are mainly into sourcing, supplying and marketing of crude oil and refined petroleum products. They have been functioning in the market for a long time. The services which they offer to customers are excellent services.
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Friday, March 20, 2020
UK Coronavirus Infections Trend Trajectory Worse than Italy - Government PANICs! Sterling Crashes! / Politics / Pandemic
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Finally Britain's schools are going to close on Friday the 20th of March, a good 2 weeks later than they should have and 1 week later than I forecast they would do over a month ago! As the government had been following the mad scientist doctrine of wanting to spread the virus via those most able to withstand and survive infection i.e. children who thankfully are being spared by the coronavirus. Who were expected to go on to infect their parents and thus eventually approximately 60% of the UK population would reach herd immunity and bring the outbreak to an end.
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Friday, March 20, 2020
UK Critical Care Nurse Cries at Empty SuperMarket Shelves, Coronavirus Panic Buying Stockpiling / Politics / Pandemic
By: N_Walayat
An Exhausted critical care nurse after a 48-hour hospital shift, found her local super market shelves empty and asks ‘how am I supposed to keep healthy?’
As UK panic buying see's shoppers strip shelves, buying for beyond their needs as was the case in Tesco Sheffield today and virtually every other UK super market.
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Friday, March 20, 2020
Coronavirus Is Not an Emergency. It’s a War / Politics / Pandemic
By: John_Mauldin
I was critical of the Federal Reserve for its emergency moves last Sunday. But I now assume they weren’t panicking. Rather, they were trying to get ahead of the situation, going where we know we need to go and doing it now. Good on them. I apologize for my criticism.Without radical action (some of which is already happening, some places, but not enough), this pandemic could cost many lives and potentially launch an economic depression. I am not exaggerating when I say this. I really mean it.
That doesn’t have to happen. We can solve this. That is what we as Americans or British or Italian or Chinese do. That is what we as humans do. We come together in a crisis.
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Friday, March 20, 2020
Why You Should Invest in the $5 Gold Coin / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
By: Submissions
Making an investment is a great move. However, deciding on the kind of investment to make is not the easiest thing to do. There is the worry if the investment is the right one, or it will at all, bring on good returns. Investing in gold is a smart investment decision. The asset has been around for a while and been considered a very valuable form of wealth. Today, it is still one of the most valuable assets one can hold.The gold coin would be an excellent place to start. 5 US dollars gold coin prince buy and sell in the resale market can get you pretty good returns. Here are some of the factors that should motivate you to look in this direction.
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Friday, March 20, 2020
Four Key Stock Market Questions To This Coronavirus Crisis Everyone is Asking / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Recently, I was asked to participate in a live radio talk with Arnold Gay and Yasmin Wonkers at Money 89.3 Asia First and was sent the following questions to prepare for the show. I thought this would be a great way to share my thoughts and expectations related to the Covid-19 virus, global economics and what the Central Banks are doing to combat this virus economic event.
The reality is that the bottom in the markets won’t set up until fear subsides and the unknowns related to this virus event are behind us. Until then, the global markets will attempt to seek out the true valuation levels based on this fear and the unknowns. This means true valuation could be much further away from current price levels as the virus event is still very fluid in nature.
I’ve included a few of our custom index charts to highlight exactly where the markets are currently situated and have attempted to explain my thinking related to these charts. Please continue reading.
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Friday, March 20, 2020
Gold to Silver Ratio’s Breakout – Like a Hot Knife Through Butter / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
By: P_Radomski_CFA
In yesterday’s free analysis, we explained why a short-term corrective upswing in the S&P 500 was likely just around the corner. In today’s article, we’ll discuss how it’s likely to impact our silver price forecast. We’ll also make comment on the current opportunity in silver compared to the opportunity in the mining stocks.
Let’s start with a few questions that we received recently and let’s reply publicly for the benefit of all.
From the Readers’ Mailbag
Q: There have been statements circulating, mostly from those promoting physical precious metals, such as KITCO, etc., a lot more in the last days and weeks than usually, that the physical silver prices are at a great premium to the paper (futures) prices, such as $1.50- 2.00 above spot prices. They are claiming there is a serious present shortage. However, my investment advisor tells me that there is, in fact, currently a significant glut of physical silver.
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Friday, March 20, 2020
The Coronavirus Contraction - Only Cooperation Can Defeat Impending Global Crisis / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: Dan_Steinbock
Despite China’s success in containment, the novel coronavirus is exploding outside China, due to complacency and inadequate preparedness. The impending contraction will compound human risks and economic damage.Although the epicenter of the outbreak is now Europe, only a few major economies have launched effective battles against the virus. Hence, the rising levels of imported cases in the borders of China and the rest of Asia.
Since complacency and inadequate preparedness prevailed outside China until recently, the consequent global pandemic casts a dark shadow over the global economy. It, too, shall pass, but only with effective global cooperation.
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Friday, March 20, 2020
Is This What Peak Market Fear Looks Like? / Stock-Markets / Financial Crisis 2020
By: MoneyMetals
The last few days have been like nothing most of us have ever experienced – or are likely to experience again in our lifetimes.
Panic has spread from the streets of Wuhan to the grocery stores of America’s heartland, from nursing homes to the Federal Reserve Board, from the stock market to the gold and silver markets.
Like other asset classes, the precious metals space is being rocked by rapidly accelerating developments, some of which haven’t occurred for decades and some of which haven’t occurred ever.
These unprecedented times are testing the mettle of precious metals investors like never before.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Alessandro De Dorides - Business Consultant / Companies / SME
By: Sumeet_Manhas
Worried about your business not working properly? Well, there are many reasons as to why your business is not doing well. It can be because your business doesn’t have a proper setup or it can be because you lack precious advice from the erudite business consultants. For any business to be successful you must always have a business consultant who can help you move further in your business regardless of the lacunae’s which you carry or have. Business consultants are masters in revealing your competitors’ policies and in concealing the fallacies of your business. So, are you thinking about your business also?
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Friday, March 20, 2020
Why a Second Depression is Possible but Not Likely / Economics / Economic Depression
By: Submissions
Almost everyone who deals in stocks and shares possesses at least a cursory knowledge of the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression that crippled the US and sent economic shock waves across the entire globe. With markets tanking on fears of an extraordinarily serious coronavirus event, some are asking if the late 1920s and early 30s could repeat themselves in short order.
The short answer is this: while a second depression is entirely possible, it is not very likely. There are several systemic differences in the financial systems of 1929 and 2020. Moreover, the Great Depression cannot be blamed entirely on the stark market crash. The crash was but a symptom of a much bigger problem. It was also just one factor that went into creating what was arguably the largest financial crisis in modern history.
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