Thursday, January 31, 2019
ECB and Fed Dance With Gold at $1,300 / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
ECB’s meeting is behind us, while the gathering of the Fed officials is ahead of us. In the meantime, the price of gold jumped above $1,300. Will it stay for longer?
Slowdown in the Eurozone, but not Recession
On Thursday, the ECB held its monetary policy meeting. It left the policy on hold. The bank also maintained its forward guidance about the future path of interest rates unchanged (they are expected to “remain at their present levels at least through the summer of 2019”). However, in his introductory statement, Draghi acknowledged the weaker momentum, caused mainly by an increase in general uncertainty:
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Oil Majors Near Inflection Point As Spending Rises / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: OilPrice_Com
Oil prices are still down sharply from the highs of October 2018, but the industry may still increase spending this year. The cost of developing new projects might rise along with higher spending levels.
A survey of top industry executives by DNV GL suggests that capital spending on oil and gas could rise in 2019. Of the 791 senior professionals in the energy industry surveyed by DNV GL, 70 percent said they plan on either maintaining or increasing capex this year. That is up significantly from the 39 percent who said the same in 2017.
“Despite greater oil price volatility in recent months, our research shows that the sector appears confident in its ability to better cope with market instability and long-term lower oil and gas prices,” said Liv Hovem, the head of DNV’s oil and gas division, according to Reuters. “For the most part, industry leaders now appear to be positive that growth can be achieved after several difficult years.”
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Gold & Silver Awaken from Eight-Year Slumber / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: MoneyMetals
Two years ago at a conference during which I both presented and attended, a Keynote speaker, "Rich Dad" Robert Kiyosaki, introduced me to a different way of looking at things. He posed the question, "How many sides does a coin have?"
The correct answer is "three." The front (obverse), back (reverse) and… the edge!
When you think about it, this makes sense. From this angle – uncommon to most observers – a person can begin to look more deeply at a given subject. From the edge, you are able by definition, to see "both sides" of the story.
Using Rich Dad's perspective as a research tool helps define and validate the premise of this essay… that the price action right now of gold – and soon silver – are giving us important clues about the direction, strength, and durability of the next price trend.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
This Is the Key to Understanding China’s Economy / Economics / China Economy
By: John_Mauldin
China is facing many challenges. That’s probably not news to you.
But what we often fail to understand is this: China will deal with those challenges in a much different way than what we are used to in the West.
To solve Europe’s financial woes in 2012, ECB President Mario Draghi promised to do “whatever it takes.” Yet central bank policy was his only tool.
Xi Jinping has a vastly larger toolbox. It is hard for us in the Western world to understand that.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Europe Has No Control Over Its Future. Period. / Economics / European Union
By: John_Mauldin
Whenever we talk about the European economy, Germany drives the discussion.
Yes, the UK and France are big, but Germany is the giant. If Germany sneezes, the rest of the continent catches cold.
And it is sneezing hard right now.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Gold Price Trend Forecast - 45 Days Until A Multi Year Breakout In Precious Metals / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Today is the day we want to warn our followers that we expect the precious metals to continue to base with a fairly narrow price range for about 45 to 65 more days before upside pricing pressures start to take hold of the markets. There has been quite a bit of chatter about Gold breaking above $1300 recently. Many people have been expecting it to move much higher fairly quickly. We don’t believe that will be the case – but expect it have another significant rally in April, May or June.
Monthly Gold Forecast Chart – Posted October 2018
Back in early October 2018, we shared this chart with all of our followers suggesting that Gold and precious metals would rally to above $1300 near December/January using our Adaptive Dynamic Learning predictive modeling system. We’ve been suggesting to our followers for many months that Gold, Silver, and miners would begin a new upside price swing, yet we knew the big breakout moves were still many months away.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Will Stocks Go Nowhere Over the Next 10 Years? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Troy_Bombardia
The U.S. stock market has held up well during this earnings season. Now that earnings season is over, many traders are looking for a pullback/retest. Overall, the statistical evidence for a pullback/retest remains strong and convincing.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Is S&P 500 Ready to Make All-Time High? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: ElliottWaveForecast
S&P 500 formed a significant high at 2947 on Sept 21, 2018 after a 342% rally in 10 years. During the entire rally from year 2009 low, there was no major correction in the Index, that is until last year. In less than 3 months, the Index has dropped 21.4% from the peak. The Index bottomed at 2316.75 on December 26, 2018. It has now retraced more than 50% of the decline.
Is the bull market ready to resume higher? Not so fast. In the following chart, we will show how the Index can face a major resistance in coming days / weeks. The important key pivot remains last year’s high at 2947. As far as this level holds, the Index can still extend lower to break below Dec 26, 2018 low at 2316.75 or pullback in 3 waves at least.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
The Alternative Solution to Bitcoin! / Currencies / BlockChain
By: Submissions
...
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
MarketOracle.co.uk Web Site Was Down for Over 22 hours from Monday Morning / sitenews / Internet
By: N_Walayat
The Marketoracle.co.uk website went down at 9.45am on Monday the 29th of January and remained down for a full 24 hours.during which time it was completely inaccessible from anywhere in the world, through any web browser. Not even I was able to log into the server, not via the domain name or the IP address. Pings go nowhere, trace routes vanish when they hit HETZNER.com in Germany.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Stock Market Brief - The Suicide of Corporate America / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Christopher_Quigley
One of the main consequences of Quantitative Easing (QE), which many folk are unaware of, is the magnitude of cheap money that has been used to fund corporate share buybacks. From 2007 to 2018 S & P 500 companies have ploughed nearly 6 trillion dollars into such activity. In the main, these companies have borrowed heavily to do so.
In my opinion this short sighted policy is suicidal and could potentially lead to severe deflation in the next recession. Let me explain. Under QE interest rates were artificially low, in fact near zero. The new FED chairman “Jay” Powell has indicated that its policy going forward is to raise rates to a “neutral” level of approx 3%. This will have a major negative draw on corporate profits and will contribute greatly to economic contraction. Given the run up in share prices that we have experienced since this bull market commenced in March 2009, it is readily accepted that the S & P 500 could fall by at least 50% when the inevitable recession eventually materializes. This means that corporate balance sheets are going to take trillions of dollars of losses on these share buybacks. For example given the near halving of Apple’s share price since October 2018 the company is now nursing a 9 billion dollar share buyback loss. What a fiasco in corporate governance.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Break above $1300 in Gold Forms Elliott Wave Impulse / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: ElliottWaveForecast
Last Friday Gold managed to break above $1300. The yellow metal has therefore broken above 8 year bearish channel in a weekly closing basis. The break also allows the metal to close back above the ascending trend support from Nov 30, 2015 low as the chart below shows.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Fed Fold Under Pressure, Telegraphs Looser Money Ahead / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: MoneyMetals
Two big questions have been front and center for Fed watchers in recent months...
The first is just how high rates could go before stimulus-addicted markets would falter. The second is whether our central bankers would bow to pressure once markets faltered and politicians began calling for the Fed to resume easy money policies.
Both questions now seem to have an answer.
They began to wonder in earnest if sky-high stock market valuations could be supported in an environment where Fed officials promised to keep rates moving even higher for the foreseeable future.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Turk Telecom Turkey Holiday Resorts and Hotels Wifi Speed Test / Personal_Finance / Travel & Holidays
By: HGR
FREE WIFI is what virtually every decent hotel and holiday resort in Turkey offers but the quality of service varies greatly, for instance some wifi services only work in the reception area and not in any of the rooms. so for those planning a trip to the Dalaman / Fethiye area of Turkey during 2019, this is a test of what to expect in terms of wifi service at a major resort such as Letoonia Club situated about 40 miles south of Dalaman and across the bay from the city of Fethiye. As we check out what broadband signal, download and upload speeds are like so you know if you need to make alternative roaming broadband arrangements before traveling.
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Monday, January 28, 2019
Will 35th Recession Bring A Swift Return To Zero Percent Interest Rates? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Dan_Amerman
Many people view the seven years of zero percent interest rates experienced in the United States between 2008 and 2015 as being safely in the past, with normal times having returned.
As explored in this analysis, so long as the business cycle of expansions and recessions has not been repealed - then we are highly likely to see a swift return to a potentially protracted bout of zero percent interest rates with the next major downturn in the economy.
Indeed, even the staff of the Federal Reserve itself expects more frequent episodes of zero percent interest rates in the future, and for those episodes to be on a more protracted basis.
This just may change everything when it comes to the financial plans of retirement and other long term investors. Zero percent interest rates don't just eviscerate the ability of retirees to earn interest income, but they also fundamentally change stock, bond, housing and precious metals prices, moving them to places that are outside of the historical averages.
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Monday, January 28, 2019
UK Mortgages Fixed Interest Rates Gap Falls to the Lowest Since 2013 / Housing-Market / Mortgages
By: MoneyFacts
The mortgage rate war is still very much at hand, with providers across the market attempting to attract new business – and the latest research from Moneyfacts.co.uk can reveal that the rate gap between two-year and five-year fixed rate mortgages has fallen to its lowest level since 2013.
The rate gap calculates the difference between average two and five-year fixed rates in order to gauge the level of competition in the mortgage market. This calculation shows that the rate gap stands at 0.41% today, down from 0.44% on average for the whole of 2018, which in itself marks a fall from 0.57% in 2017 and from 0.64% in 2016.
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Monday, January 28, 2019
Philippine Peso Stability Relies on Duterte’s Infrastructure Success / Currencies / Phillippines
By: Dan_Steinbock
Recent concerns about peso’s depreciation have been exaggerated. In the most dangerous international environment since the postwar era, there is no room for complacency, however.In the past, international and domestic critics of the Duterte government have complained that the Philippine peso has fallen "six straight years,” which is seen as a sign of the failure of Duterte agenda.
In March 2017, Bloomberg reported that “Asia's ugly duckling of 2017 is the peso, thanks to Duterte.” At the time, peso’s weakening was explained, oddly enough, by investors who had been spooked by allegations of “unlawful killings and corruption.”
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Monday, January 28, 2019
Saudi Stock Market (Tadawul) at pivotal juncture / Stock-Markets / Saudi Arabia
By: MarketsToday
As of yesterday’s (Sunday) 8,528.30 trend high, the Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) has rocketed over 12% in 25 trading days, when counting from the swing low of 7,589.23 on December 23. A long-term bullish trend continuation signal was triggered on the move as the day’s close was at 8,509.43, just above the most recent peak of 8,502.92 from July 2018. Further, yesterday’s close was the highest daily closing price since August 2015.
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Monday, January 28, 2019
Will Crude Oil Find Support Above $50? / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Recent global news regarding Venezuela, China, and global oil supply/production have resulted in the price of Oil pausing over the past few weeks near $53 to $55 ppb. We believe the continued supply glut and uncertainty will result in oil prices falling, briefly, back below $50 ppb before any new price rally begins. Our researchers at www.TheTechnicalTraders.com believe historical resistance near $54~55 is strong enough to drive prices lower before new momentum picks up for a renewed price rally.
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Monday, January 28, 2019
Did AAPL Save the Fed, or Did the Fed Save APPL? / Companies / Apple
By: Mike_Paulenoff
The upcoming week is loaded with potentially significant directional markets catalysts such as earnings from mega-cap industrial names like CAT, BA, and XOM, as well as from technology powerhouses AAPL, FB, AMZN, AMD, and QCOM. At the end of the week, the BLS is scheduled to release the December Employment Report.
To my mind, though, the most consequential potential market-moving "events" will occur Wednesday afternoon starting at 2 PM ET, when the FOMC releases its next policy statement, and at 2:30 PM ET, when Fed Chairman Powell addresses reporters at the post-meeting press conference. The Fed will clearly have Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s earnings news from Tuesday after the bell on its mind.
This is because back on Jan 2 -- the first trading session of the new year -- AAPL pre-announced a shortfall in revenues for fiscal Q1, 2019. It was the first such slash in quarterly earnings in the past 15 years, mostly blaming the decline in iPhone demand on sluggish economic conditions in China (aka the US-China trade dispute).
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