Monday, March 05, 2018
Trump to Declare War on Fed Central Bank / Politics / Central Banks
By: Michael_Pento
We are only a little over one year into the Donald’s Presidency and what we know most for sure is that our new President loves debt. Not only did debt and deficits get the cold shoulder in the recent State of the Union, Trump played “Let’s Make a Deal” with the Lords of the Swamp Mitch and Chuck to increase government spending by 13% over current levels. We also know that he prefers a weaker dollar, which he hopes will engender balanced trade—along with trade tariffs it now seems. But most of all, he loves as a rising stock market that he views as a report card for the administration and his success.
Monday, March 05, 2018
Gold’s Chance to Finally Shine and its Upside Target for Friday / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: P_Radomski_CFA
Taking profits on our short positions and closing them on Thursday turned out to be a good idea. Gold, silver and – on an intraday basis – mining stocks moved higher on Friday, while the USD Index declined. But, is the rally over after just one day? Not likely – gold’s and miners’ turning points are likely to result in something more than just a daily rally. So, how high is gold likely to rally this time? That’s what we discuss in the following part of today’s alert.
But first, let’s take a look at what happened in the USD Index (chart courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).
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Monday, March 05, 2018
Stock Market SPX 100 Point Drop? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
SPX futures have started to decline again as of 6:00 am. SPX is on a sell signal, having declined beneath all Cycle supports, including the 50-day Moving Average.
Today the Fractal Model suggests a decline of approximately 100 points that should take SPX beneath the Cycle Bottom support at 2603.68. Unless something breaks down, it does not appear that it will take out the prior low at 2532.69. That may complete Wave 1 of (3). From there we may see a bounce back to the trendline near 2675.00. Prepare yourself for some wide swings as the volatility increases.
ZeroHedge writes, “What started off as a sea of red, with S&P futures tumbling as much as -25 points ahead of the European open, on fears of trade wars and concerns about the surge in Italy's anti-establishment parties, has managed to rebound notable and stabilize, with most Asian and European markets now green. The dollar was steady and Treasuries gained, while Italian bonds dropped as the nation headed toward a hung parliament.”
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Monday, March 05, 2018
Friday's Bounce Gave Stock Market Bulls Some Hope, Stocks at a Crossroads, or a Cliff? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Paul_Rejczak
Friday's trading session brought an intraday rebound of the main U.S. stock market indexes. They opened lower and continued short-term downtrend before bouncing off and closing between -0.3% and +1.1% vs. their Thursday's closing prices. Was this a final sell-off within a downtrend from Tuesday's local high? The broad stock market may have found at least some temporary bottom, but will it continue upwards or just go sideways?
The main U.S. stock market indexes were mixed between -0.3% and +1.1% vs. their Thursday's closing prices on Friday, following lower opening of the trading session and an intraday bounce off support levels. The S&P 500 index closed 0.5% higher, and it is currently trading 6.3% below January 26 record high of 2,872.87. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.3%, as it was relatively weaker than the broad stock market again and the technology Nasdaq Composite gained 1.1% on Friday.
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Monday, March 05, 2018
US Dollar at the Start of Multi-Year Downtrend / Currencies / US Dollar
By: ElliottWave-Forecast
Since the US Dollar trades freely in the 1970s, on average it has rallied and declined in a period of 7.5 years. The chart below shows short term and long term US Dollar cycle:
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Monday, March 05, 2018
Five Year Buy-to-let Mortgage Interest Rates Return to Record Lows / Housing-Market / Mortgages
By: MoneyFacts
In April 2016, the buy-to-let (BTL) market faced a stamp duty rule change, whereby BTL purchases would incur an extra 3% surcharge on the stamp duty payable. As a result, many landlords who are looking to buy a property sought to do so before this tax change.
Those who took a two-year fixed rate deal back then will be thinking about remortgaging soon. In attempts to attract these borrowers, research from moneyfacts.co.uk shows that the average five-year fixed rate has fallen to 3.43% – a joint record-low, which was last seen in October 2017.
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Monday, March 05, 2018
The Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fracking / Commodities / Oil Companies
By: OilPrice_Com
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Monday, March 05, 2018
Will The Trump Trade Tariffs Send The Stock Market Into A Tizzy? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Avi_Gilburt
Each week, I believe the silliness being espoused as to what moves the market reaches a climax. Yet, the following week somehow always proves me wrong.
Two weeks ago, I noted how the pundits claimed the market dropped because of rising rates, but when the market rallied, the same pundits claimed that it was rallying because of rising rates.
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Monday, March 05, 2018
Fade The News – Another Leg Higher For Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Recently, quite a bit of news has been published warning of a massive market correction or top that may scare you. Our research shows this is not the case. We want to set your mind at ease with regards to these fears they may be experiencing with some real research and price modeling that has proven to be extremely accurate over the past 5+ months.
The research team at www.TheTechnicalTraders.com has continued to publish market research documents that have contradicted many of the largest research firms on the planet. Our small, but dedicated, team of analysts and researchers have spent years developing modeling systems that assist us in knowing what the markets will do in the future. In some cases, many weeks in advance. This helps us time our trades and select market sectors that are about to rotate well before the moves begin.
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Monday, March 05, 2018
SILVER Large Specualtors Net Short Position 15 Year Anniversary / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: Clive_Maund
Technical analyst Clive Maund charts silver and explains why he is bullish on the metal.
The purpose of this update is to commemorate the Large Specs having their first net short position in silver since the site started 15 years ago, and also to consider how we can turn this to our advantage. Before we look at silver's latest extraordinary COT chart and consider its implications, we will first quickly review the silver charts.
We will start with an 8-year chart that shows the big picture and includes the entire bear market from the April–May 2011 peak. On this chart we see that silver is in the very late stage of a giant downsloping Head-and-Shoulders bottom and currently grinding sideways marking out a protracted Right Shoulder low. Because of its downslope, many observers think that silver's bear market is ongoing and fail to spot that this is a giant base pattern, but the parallel Head-and-Shoulders bottom in gold is much more obvious because it is flat-topped, and it is this that helps give the game away.
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Monday, March 05, 2018
A Complex Stock Market Correction / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Andre_Gratian
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend – The bull market is continuing with a top expected in the low 3000s.
Intermediate trend – The intermediate correction from 2872 has become more complex.
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, March 04, 2018
Best Cash ISA Savings for Rising UK Interest Rates and High Inflation - March 2018 / Personal_Finance / ISA's
By: Nadeem_Walayat
UK savers have just 1 month left to capitalise on their 20k annual tax free ISA savings allowance, and I am sure many are buoyed by mainstream financial press coverage of warnings of rising UK interest rates which includes for savers as well as borrowers as the Bank of England is expected to continue hiking UK base rates as it plays the game of follow the US Federal Reserve Bank leader and withdraw some of its support for Britain's banking sector such as the funding for lending scheme that resulted in a catastrophic downwards death spiral in UK savings interest rates when it first began in 2012. That resulted in UK savers being literally ripped off by the tax payer bailed out banking sector, the duration for which the banks that have continued to bank bonuses on the basis of artificial profits engineered by the Bank of England in an attempt at recapitalisng the bankrupt banks all whilst savers continue to suffer and pay the price in terms of real terms loss of purchasing power of savings as inflation continues to erode the heard earned wealth of Britain's savers.
Sunday, March 04, 2018
Putin - The Man Who Stopped Washington’s Regime Change Rampage / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Mike_Whitney
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Sunday, March 04, 2018
More Stock Market Selling in the Offing? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Brad_Gudgeon
Last week, I wrote about the looming bull trap. On Feb 27th, the stock market topped and the SPX fell 142 points or about 5% in 3 days. My observation was based on time cycles, Elliott Wave and Mars conjunct Vesta. Most of the decline was blamed on the Trump announcement of tariffs on Aluminum and Steel, with fears igniting about a coming trade war.
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Saturday, March 03, 2018
Crude Oil and Water: How Climate Change is Threatening our Two Most Precious Commodities / Commodities / Climate Change
By: Richard_Mills
While there is disagreement over its causes – man-made versus natural – the reality of climate change is an incontrovertible fact. The planet is warming, affecting our weather, our oceans, our growing seasons, even our food, as crops fail, causing shortages and price hikes. Storms are becoming more frequent, and more intense, and droughts are lasting longer.
Forest fires are an annual occurrence in Australia, California and British Columbia, and in the United States and the Caribbean, people live in fear of the next hurricane that could literally turn their lives upside down.
Most of us have watched videos of calving glaciers as huge chunks of ice break off millions-year-old ice sheets and tumble into the sea. They have become emblematic of the highly-politicized cause of climate change, or dare we say, “global warming.” Starting with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, the global warming alarmists have been on a decades-long crusade against the fossil fuel industry, but few have stopped to think about what are the implications of climate change from an investment point of view.
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Saturday, March 03, 2018
Stock Market Fears of Inflation are Overblown Right Now / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Troy_Bombardia
Bears attribute the stock market’s recent correction to fears of rising inflation. This isn’t true. The rally before this correction was the longest rally in history without a 6%+ “small correction”. Hence, a correction was overdue. Rising inflation was merely an excuse for the market’s selloff.
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Saturday, March 03, 2018
Maybe The Economy Is Too Good For Investors / Economics / US Economy
By: WMA
In the early 19th century, London financier Nathan Rothschild said “buy on the sound of cannons, sell on the trumpets”. The cannons referred to the start of war (valuations are therefore attractive as disorder begins) and the trumpets refer to the peace treaty ending the conflict (at which time timid investors pile back into risky financial assets). Warren Buffet has often reiterated the same idea first enounced by Rothschild saying “buy when there is blood in the streets” (eg, when valuations are very low).
Saturday, March 03, 2018
Currencies Will Be ‘Flushed Down the Toilet’ Triggering a ‘Mad Rush into Gold’ / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: MoneyMetals
Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome back 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 money manager and a fantastic market commentator, and over the past few years has been a wonderful guest and one of our favorite interviews here on the Money Metals Podcast and we always enjoy getting his Austrian economist viewpoint.
Michael, welcome back and thanks for joining us again.
Michael Pento: What a great introduction. Thanks for having me back on, Mike.
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Saturday, March 03, 2018
The 'Beast from the East' Day 3 From Millhouses Park, Sheffield UK / Local / Sheffield
By: N_Walayat
It's Day 3 of the 'Beast from the East' weather from Siberia hitting the UK hard with heavy snowfall and wind chill temperatures of -10c, disrupting travel throughout the week as snow flurries continued to fall onto the gritted roads in the coldest weather experienced for at least the past 5 years. On Day 3 we took a trip to one of Sheffield's Millhouses park to see what it was like in the midst of the 'Beast from the East'
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Friday, March 02, 2018
Fed Interest Hikes, US Dollar, and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: Zeal_LLC
The US dollar has fallen rather sharply over the past year or so, despite ongoing Fed rate hikes. This persistent dollar weakness has really boosted gold. There’s a fascinating interplay between these two currencies and futures speculators’ expectations for Fed rate hikes. These traders hang on every word from top Fed officials, which greatly influences their trading. So these relationships are important to understand.
In late December 2016, the venerable US Dollar Index surged to an incredible 14.0-year secular high. That was just a couple weeks after the Federal Reserve’s second interest-rate increase of this hiking cycle. Top Fed officials were forecasting three more rate hikes in 2017, fueling euphoric sentiment in this top reserve currency. Everyone believed higher prevailing interest rates would prove very bullish for the dollar.
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