Saturday, December 24, 2016
The Italian Banking Crisis: No Free Lunch -- or Is There? / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2016
By: Ellen_Brown
On December 4, 2016, Italian voters rejected a referendum to amend their constitution to give the government more power, and the Italian prime minister resigned. The resulting chaos has pushed Italy's already-troubled banks into bankruptcy. First on the chopping block is the 500 year old Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA (BMP), the oldest surviving bank in the world and the third largest bank in Italy. The concern is that its loss could trigger the collapse of other banks and even of the eurozone itself.
Saturday, December 24, 2016
A Broken US Bond Market Bounce Beckons! / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Gordon_T_Long
Historical Correlations Give Us a Clue to What May Be Ahead!
A Falling Global Market Cap Trend Channel
The old adage that the "Trend is Your Friend" has proven to be the one that separates the winners from the losers. The key however is whether you recognize the right trend!
We are being possibly lulled into a false perception and belief of how good things appear if we solely look at the US equity rally. Yes it is temporarily rising but the 600# Gorilla is the Global Bond market and major problems are still lurking.
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Saturday, December 24, 2016
Feds Interest Rate Hikes Stance Equates to Nonsense and Masses are Turning Bullish on Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
By: Sol_Palha
"Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes." ~ Henry David Thoreau
Remember over a year ago when they first raised hikes-they huffed and puffed warning everyone that they would raise rates several times in 2016 and viola nothing happened until now. Now they are repeating the same thing all over again. To illustrate how bad this economy take into consideration that the Fed has raised rates only twice in the last decade; the economy was a lot stronger in 2006 and 2007 than it is today. Yellen's statement below illustrates how the Fed is positioning itself so that it can pull another "oops we were wrong once again" moment.
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Saturday, December 24, 2016
Harry Dent - I’m NOT a Bull! / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
By: Harry_Dent
On December 13, Denzel Washington hit the nail on the head when he said:
If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed.
If you DO read the paper, you’re misinformed…
We live in a society now where it’s just “get it out first!”
We don’t care who it hurts.
We don’t care who we destroy.
We don’t care if it’s true.
Just say it!
Sell it.
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Saturday, December 24, 2016
Deutsche Bank Settlement: Seasonal Intraday Charts Provide Evidence for Gold Market Manipulation / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
By: Dimitri_Speck
Answer UBS trader: "yeah, we smashed it good."
Deutsche Bank is a defendant in more than 7,000 lawsuits worldwide. In two of them it has recently agreed to settlements and is prepared to pay tens of millions of US dollars in restitution and fines. This includes the settling of lawsuits over gold and silver price manipulation. Associated court proceedings against other financial institutions are still underway.
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Saturday, December 24, 2016
Bitcoin Breaks Out To New All-Time Market Cap Highs…How High Can It Go? / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Jeff_Berwick
Bitcoin has had quite a month, rising from $725 to a high of $911 today.
Friday, December 23, 2016
Chinese Yuan: "Manipulated" Does NOT Mean "Unpredictable" / Currencies / China Currency Yuan
By: EWI
"...markets are bigger than governments."
This year's U.S. presidential election brought into focus one market you don't hear about often: the Chinese yuan, or renminbi.
"Donald Trump has been telling us all for a long time now that China is a currency manipulator. It's part of his plan for his first 100 days in office to get on with making sure that China is legally declared to be such a currency manipulator and thus start the process of doing something about it.
"The problem with this is that China really is a currency manipulator. But they're manipulating the value of the yuan up, not down. Thus returning it to the correct free market value isn't going to have the desired effect of closing America's trade deficit with China." (Forbes, Nov. 13.)
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Friday, December 23, 2016
Stock Market Something Wicked This Way Comes, Crash? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market Crash
By: James_Quinn
I stopped trying to predict markets back in 2008 when the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Wall Street bankers, and their propaganda peddling media mouthpieces colluded to rig the markets to benefit the elite establishment players while screwing average Americans. I haven’t owned any stocks to speak of since 2006. I missed the the final blow-off, the 50% crash, and the subsequent engineered new bubble. But that doesn’t stop me from assessing our true economic situation, market valuations, and historical comparisons in order to prove the irrationality and idiocy of the current narrative.
Friday, December 23, 2016
Bush Trumps Reagan Stock Market / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
By: Peter_Schiff
The optimism that has followed the election of Donald Trump has pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the threshold of 20,000, a level that will be both a nominal record and a symbolic milestone. Although this is not the way most observers had predicted that 2016 would play out, most on Wall Street have become extremely reluctant to look a gift horse in the mouth...or to even look at him at all. The impulse is to jump on and ride, and only ask questions if it pulls up lame. But if this year has proven one thing, it is that predictions made by the consensus should not be trusted.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
U.S. Shale Oil Cash Flow Is Now Neutral / Commodities / Shale Oil and Gas
By: OilPrice_Com
Oil prices are probably already high enough to spark a rebound in shale production.
The IEA says that in the third quarter of 2016, the U.S. shale industry became cash flow neutral for the first time ever. That isn’t a typo. For years, the drilling boom was done with a lot of debt, and the revenues earned from steadily higher levels of output were not enough to cover the cost of drilling, even when oil prices traded above $100 per barrel in the go-go drilling days between 2011 and 2014. Even when U.S. oil production hit a peak at 9.7 million barrels per day in the second quarter of 2015, the industry did not break even. Indeed, shale companies were coming off of one of their worst quarters in terms of cash flow in recent history.
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Thursday, December 22, 2016
Stock Market More Fluctuations Along Record Highs, Which Direction Is Next? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
By: Paul_Rejczak
Briefly: In our opinion, speculative short positions are favored (with stop-loss at 2,330, and profit target at 2,150, S&P 500 index).
Our intraday outlook remains bearish, and our short-term outlook is bearish. Our medium-term outlook remains neutral, following S&P 500 index breakout above last year's all-time high:
Intraday outlook (next 24 hours): bearish
Short-term outlook (next 1-2 weeks): bearish
Medium-term outlook (next 1-3 months): neutral
Long-term outlook (next year): neutral
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Social Trading – Different types and Styles / Interest-Rates / Learn to Trade
By: Submissions
...
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Dow 20k Mission Accomplished, Stocks Bull Market Delights Could Have Violent Bear Market Ends / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Today (21st December) the Dow again traded within a whisker of the mega stocks bull market milestone of 20,000 by hitting a high of 19,987 before retreating to close at 19,942, up 15% on the year and 9% since Trumps election win, and I just cannot wait any longer for those extra 13 points to materialise before publishing this analysis.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Considerable Down Day for Wall Street / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
By: Harry_Boxer
The stock market indices had a mixed session and a down day, starting out a little bit positive, but then came down and consolidated all day. In the last hour, they rolled over and closed at the session lows for the S&P 500, but way above the lows on the Nasdaq 100.
Net on the day, the Dow was down 32.66 at 19,941.96, 14 points from its new all-time high at 20,000. The intraday high was 19,986, right at the prior intraday high. The S&P 500 was down 5.58 at 2265.18, right at the low for the day, and 6 points off the high. The Nasdaq 100 was down 4.90 at 4948.90, 10 points off its low.
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Thursday, December 22, 2016
Trump Protectionism, Trade Chief Peter Navarro – and The Quest To Demonize China / Economics / Protectionism
By: Dan_Steinbock
While most Americans view China as friendly though not as an ally, those who favor demonizing China seek to change both perceptions and realities. Starting in January, these trade protectionists will lead US policies in the White House.
Recently, President-elect Trump chose Harvard-trained economist Peter Navarro to head the newly-created National Trade Council (NTC) in the White House to oversee industrial policy. Targeting the trade deficit is expected to pave way to Trump’s “First America” trade protectionism.
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Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Amazon UK Chaotic Delivery Tracking System, Customers Should Expect Early Deliveries / ConsumerWatch / Amazon
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Like many online buyers, I too regularly use amazon to shop for large and small items, nothing beats the convenience of arm chair shopping at any time of the day, that and added buyer protections offered that one is more likely to get what one is actually ordering against Ebay purchases that are more than likely to disappoint.
However, as many if not most regular amazon buyers are likely already aware of that there is a huge flaw in amazons shopping experience and that is in the reliability of their delivery tracking system which just does not WORK! For as long as at least for a year, Amazon routinely fails to deliver in line with that which it's delivery tracking service states to expect delivery on which tends to result in failed deliveries and further delays and customer frustration.
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Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Stock Market Bulls, Stock Market Fools - Market Crash Next or Just an Illusion / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
By: Sol_Palha
Since the markets bottomed in 2009, one naysayer after another has penned many an obituary for this market. Alas, all those obituaries were based on fantasy and false perceptions; the bull is alive and kicking while many of those experts are either bankrupt or have bankrupted their clients several times over. We repeatedly stated over the years that the era of low interest fostered an environment that favoured speculation over hard work. This is why so may companies have opted to be boosts EPS via share buyback programs. Why work, when through the magic of accounting you can create the impression of growth when there is none. All is well, and when it ends, only the workers and the masses will lose for the corporate wenches will walk away with bloated accounts.
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Wednesday, December 21, 2016
European Financials take a Hit / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2016
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
This is the longest-term USD chart that I can find. The structure leads me to believe that it is on a giant retracement pattern that may have an ultimate target of 131.00 at a 61.8% retracement of the decline starting in 1984. I will be making minor revisions in my daily and weekly charts to reflect that outlook.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
The Trump Doctrine: A Work in Progress / Politics / US Politics
By: STRATFOR
By Reva Goujon : The world is in a "frenzy of study," Henry Kissinger said in a recent interview. At home and abroad, strategists and pundits are trying to piece together a blueprint of American foreign policy under U.S. President-elect Donald Trump from a stream of tweets, some campaign slogans, a few eye-catching Cabinet picks, meetings at Trump Tower, and a pingpong match already underway with Beijing. Highbrow intellectualism can be a handicap in this exercise. Commentators among the Washington establishment have been quick to dismiss Trump's foreign policy moves outright as erratic and self-serving over the past few weeks. In an op-ed entitled "Trump Failed His First Foreign Policy Test," for instance, columnist David Ignatius admonished the president-elect for the "hot mess" his phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen precipitated. Trump makes people uncomfortable. It's what he does best, in fact. But how this quality applies to foreign policy is a question that merits deeper exploration than knee-jerk displays of stricken disbelief. After all, as Kissinger noted in his Dec. 18 interview, "a president has to have some core convictions."
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Why Are Pakistan’s Stock and Financial Markets Soaring, Really? / Stock-Markets / Pakistan
By: Dan_Steinbock
During six decades of US aid, Pakistan’s living standards plunged. But in the past year, Asia’s largest frontier market delivered foretaste of its promise – with China’s support.Recently, Pakistan’s stock market crossed the 46,000 point milestone. Investor sentiment is increasingly bullish. In the past year, Pakistan’s equity markets beat those of China and India by a wide margin. The former was up 16%, whereas the latter were in negative for the year.
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