Sunday, February 18, 2018
An Inflation Indicator to Watch, Part 1 / Economics / Inflation
By: F_F_Wiley
“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”—Milton Friedman
Have you ever questioned Milton Friedman’s famous claim about inflation?
Ever heard anyone else question it?
Unless you read obscure stuff written for the academic community, you’re probably not used to Friedman’s quote being challenged. And that’s despite a lousy forecasting record by economists who bought into his Monetarist methods.
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Sunday, February 18, 2018
Get on Top Of Debt Before It Gets on Top of You / Personal_Finance / Credit Cards & Scoring
By: Boris_Dzhingarov
The financial markets are in a constant state of flux. Judging from the current volatility in equities markets, one would be remiss not to pay attention to economic indicators when making trading or investment decisions. For example, one of the most important components of investment-related decision-making is interest rates. On Wednesday, 21 March 2018, the Fed FOMC will be meeting to discuss another possible rate hike. The federal funds rate (FFR) is expected to rise 25-basis points in the region of 1.50% – 1.75%. The current probability of such a rate hike taking place is 83.1%. This has far-reaching ramifications on a typical US household’s ability to manage debt repayments.
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Sunday, February 18, 2018
Will the Stock Market Make a Double Bottom? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Submissions
Troy Bombardia writes:The S&P 500 has already fallen more than -10% (-11.8% to be precise). A brief study using VIX suggested that the stock market would retest its lows in the next few weeks. Let’s expand that study.
Read full article... Read full article...What happens when the S&P falls at least -10% and then retraces 50% of the decline? Is the bottom in? Or does the S&P at least retest its lows?
Sunday, February 18, 2018
5 Reasons Why Commodities Are the Investment Place to be in 2018 / Commodities / Investing 2018
By: Richard_Mills
The stock market pullback of the last couple of weeks has shown that markets are jittery, and will likely be volatile for awhile as investors keep a vigil on rising bond yields (inflation) and potential interest rate hikes. In these uncertain times, one sector that appears to be holding its own, and then some, is commodities. Let’s examine why this is the case, and why commodities are going to be THE place to put your money in 2018. The correction
The stock market correction (let’s not call it a crash) that suddenly saw everyone’s trading apps turn red on Monday Feb. 5 shocked investors. The S&P 500 was off 4.1% at 2,648 - the worst fall in 6.5 years. The rot spread to Asian stock markets the next day, with Japan’s Topix index falling 6.3%, South Korea’s Kospi losing 2.6%, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 down by 3.7%.
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Sunday, February 18, 2018
Gold: Another Month, Another Test Of Key Resistance – But This Time With A Difference / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: John_Rubino
Gold spiked in January, and looked to be headed even higher. But there were some problems. First, futures speculators – as tracked by the Commitment of Traders (COT) report – had gone overwhelmingly long, and since they tend to be wrong at emotional extremes, this was a red flag. Second, gold was approaching the $1360 level that had, since 2014, been the place where upward momentum went to die. For the relevant charts, see Gold Jumps To Crucial Technical Level. Important Action Coming Up.
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Sunday, February 18, 2018
Addicted to Virtual Reality - Dangers of VR Addiction After First Use! / ConsumerWatch / Virtual Reality
By: HGR
Samsung with their series of Gear VR headsets, typically for under £60, have made VR affordable to anyone with a high end Samsung smartphone. The key thing is the ease of use, just slot the phone into the headset and after a quick automated software install the user is immediately immersed in a surprisingly high resolution VR world.
However, what we may be seeing are the beginnings of a new addiction, one of the soon to be exploding epidemic of being addicted to exciting virtual reality fantasy worlds and impressive games rather than the far more mundane real world, and as this video illustrates the addiction can be near instantaneous, even after just the a few minutes of first use, so VR has a lot in common with many hard drugs!
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Saturday, February 17, 2018
1 Week Later, Stock, Bond Market Risk Remains ‘On’ as 2 of 3 Amigos Ride On / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2018
By: Gary_Tanashian
Despite a tough week for stocks into Friday, February 9, three big picture macro indicators have continued to support a risk ‘on’ backdrop. Many of the shorter-term indicators we watch, like Junk bond ratios and the Palladium/Gold ratio say the same thing. Junk/Treasury and Junk/Investment Grade are threatening new highs and as we have noted in NFTRH updates all through the recent market volatility, Palladium (cyclical) got hammered vs. Gold (counter-cyclical), but only to test its major uptrend. Now the ratio is bouncing with the market relief that is so predictably taking hold (here’s a public post where we effectively called bullish, in-day on that Friday).
As for the bigger macro indicators, the middle one, Amigo #2 (long-term interest rates) has that funny look on his face because he is bracing for something.
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Saturday, February 17, 2018
Crude Oil Prices: A Case of Dueling Narratives? / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: WMA
There are indications Crude Oil prices are going lower. There are also indications that it’s going higher. Which narrative do you believe?
Oil Bears point to what they believe is over-supply caused by soaring US production, mostly from shale fields. With production increasing over +20% in less than two years, and drill rigs on the rise, the US now produces about as much Oil as the industry leaders, Saudi Arabia and Russia. According to the Oil Bears, the Saudi-Russia pact to restrain global production and export levels will break down in 2018, thereby leading to more supply than demand, causing lower prices. Moreover, the Bears are confident that alternative energy supply (e.g., solar/battery and uranium) will eventually win out as it is a cheaper and cleaner power source, and that Electric Vehicles are increasingly favored by consumers.
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Saturday, February 17, 2018
Loan Shark Nation: Forcing Our Kids To Choose Between Student Loans And Everything Else / Personal_Finance / Student Finances
By: John_Rubino
It’s mid-winter, which means millions of high school seniors are winding up their childhoods and planning for what comes next. For many this next stage is college.
But in yet another example of how we baby boomers have rigged the system in our favor at the expense of pretty much everyone else, student loans – barely necessary when most boomers graduated 40 years ago – have become a life-defining problem for our kids and grandkids.
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Saturday, February 17, 2018
Free 1000 Youtube Subscribers Services - YTpals, Subpals, SubmeNow Test / ConsumerWatch / Internet
By: N_Walayat
Youtube on the 20th of January decided to cut all small channels loose from their partner programme, all those channels with less than 1000 subscribers and 4k watch time who by the 20th of February will be ejected from the Youtube partner programme that amongst several benefits included monetization of videos which in most cases for Youtubers resulted in a token return of typically about $10 per month. So the blow for being ejected from the youtube partner programme is not financial but rather Youtube effectively telling its smaller youtubers to get lost, as effectively Youtube is now no longer YOUtube but instead it's Celebtube or Adtube, really just another broadcast channel full of commercialised content full of ads and NOT what YOUtube has been for the past 10 years!
Friday, February 16, 2018
How to Trade as We Near March Stock Market Top / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Our focus is to provide you with updated and accurate market price predictions for all of 2018, we believe we are entering a period that will be fantastic for traders and active investors. We believe this recent volatility has shaken out the low volatility expectations and will allow the markets to start moving in a more normal rotational mode going forward. This means we’ll have lots of trading opportunities to profit from.
For those of you who have not been following our research over the past 2 to 3 months, we urge you to visit our Technical Traders Ltd. website to read our published research and to learn how we’ve been calling these moves in the markets for our members. We called the early 2018 market rally weeks before it started. We called the lower price rotation over a month before it happened. We called the bottom in this price correction almost to the day and told our members that we believed a very quick Pennant price formation was set up that will drive prices higher which we have seen this week.
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Friday, February 16, 2018
Bitcoin as Poison / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Mike_McAra
The views on Bitcoin among various investors are quite polarized. The whole spectrum includes both people directly owning the cryptocurrency and those who seem to hate it. We have read analyses suggesting that a surprising percentage of hedge fund managers own digital coins. At the same time, Warren Buffett's investment chief, Charlie Munger, called Bitcoin “noxious poison.” Do such words mean that Bitcoin is doomed? In an article on the Guardian website, we read:
Bitcoin is heading towards $10,000 again, despite comments from the US billionaire Charles Munger who described the digital currency as “noxious poison”.
(…)
Speaking at the annual meeting of the US publishing firm Daily Journal, which he chairs, in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Munger said: “I never considered for one second having anything to do with it. I detested it the moment it was raised. It’s just disgusting. Bitcoin is noxious poison.”
Friday, February 16, 2018
GDX Gold ETF Weathers Stock Market Selloff / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
By: Zeal_LLC
The gold miners’ stocks weathered the recent stock-market plunge really well. As evident in their leading GDX ETF, they were already beaten down before stock markets started falling. The resulting explosion of fear bled into GDX, forcing it even lower. Nevertheless, no major technical damage was done. GDX remained well within its consolidation trend channel and is still within striking distance of a major $25 breakout.
Gold stocks’ behavior during stock-market selloffs can seem capricious. This small contrarian sector generally amplifies the price action in gold, which drives its collective profitability. Gold tends to surge in the wake of major stock-market selloffs, which erode investors’ confidence in stocks’ near-term outlook. That greatly boosts gold investment demand as investors soon rush to wisely diversify their stock-heavy portfolios.
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Friday, February 16, 2018
Casino Statistics and Demographics / Companies / Gambling
By: Submissions
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Friday, February 16, 2018
IS Today Thee Stock Market Turn Day? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
SPX futures were higher overnight, but appear to be coming back down as the cash open approaches. The total retracement was 58.5%, an overshoot that was carried by the all-pervading enthusiasm to buy the dip coupled with a stop hunt to remove any timid short sellers who thought they could protect themselves with stop-losses.
.ZeroHedge reports, “Global stocks were set to post their best week of gains in six years on Friday after two consecutive weeks spent in the red, shrugging off a rise in global borrowing costs while the dollar hit its lowest level since 2014. The MSCI world index rose 0.4% after European bourses opened. .After suffering its biggest weekly drop since August 2015 last week, this week’s recovery puts the index on track for its best weekly showing since early December 2011.”
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Friday, February 16, 2018
U.S. Dollar Bull and Bear Markets / Currencies / US Dollar
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The idea of endlessly repeated cycles is a very old one. This is how the ancients perceived time: not as linear sequence of events, but as replaying patterns of dark and golden ages. Although the Judeo-Christian culture changed the way we view time, we like to see the market as an area of constant struggle between bulls and bears, and the resulting upward and downward trends.
Since the end of the Bretton Woods system back in the early 1970s, the U.S. dollar has also moved in trends and cycles. Due to data availability, the chart below shows the trade weighted index of the greenback against the currencies of America’s major trading partners from 1973 until January 2018, with bull and bear markets marked with green and red arrows.
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Friday, February 16, 2018
Gold Up 3.8% In Week – If Closes Above $1,360/oz Will Be Biggest Weekly Gain In Nearly 2 Years / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: GoldCore
Gold rose as the dollar fell to near a three-year low against a basket of currencies on Friday, heading for its biggest weekly loss in nine months, as a slew of bearish factors including firming inflation and a fall in retail sales and industrial production hit the dollar.
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Friday, February 16, 2018
Have You Been Getting Run Over By This Stock Market Action? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
By: Avi_Gilburt
"Stocks are going down because the economy is too good?"
How many times did you hear something like that quote over the last two weeks on television? And, it was accompanied by the barrage of reports proclaiming the demise of the bull market which began in 2009. But, if you are a thinking person, clearly you had to have been scratching your head.
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Friday, February 16, 2018
Allow The Precious Metals Market To Prove Itself / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
By: Avi_Gilburt
We have been here several times before over the last year. The market has bottomed, provided us with a strong rally, but has failed to confirm the major break out for which we have been looking.
As I noted over the weekend, the 144-minute silver chart has been quite prescient in identifying turns in this market. And, it has still not yet failed us. But, the question is what type of turn are we seeing right now?
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Friday, February 16, 2018
Huge SMIGGLE Shopping HAUL, Pencil Cases, Drinks Bottles, Back Packs, Toys.... / Personal_Finance / Shopping
By: Anika_Walayat
Here's addicted to all things SMIGGLE Anika's massive haul of virtually everything she has bought from SMIGGLE during the past 2 years, pencil cases, water bottles, back pack, puzzles, springs, toys, and of course loads, and loads of pens, pencils, erasers and other stationary items. And prepared to be SHOCKED when you see what she actually now takes to school each day!
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