Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Gold Golden Opportunity or Gold-Plated Trap? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Gold broke out of a small pennant formation on the daily chart last week and gained $18.80/oz. to close the week at $1,112.90. On the weekly chart gold printed an engulfing bullish candlestick. The breakout above 1,100 is bullish but the real test will be a breakout above 1,140. For now, the daily Coppock Curve is rising and has a ways to go before it will signal a top in gold. Cycles point to an important low during July and a rally for all of August. Seasonally, August is very bullish for gold.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Dr. Copper is Speaking, are you Listening? ... / Commodities / Copper
Copper is an important commodity when it comes to the health of the world economies and how it does often reflects how strong or weak the economy is. Its been awhile since we took an indepth look at Dr. Copper to see how healthy it is so tonight we'll look at a few charts starting with a daily look.
The daily chart for Copper is showing it has completed a double headed, double H&S top, which is having a somewhat ugly breakout and backtest of the lower neckline #2. The smaller H&S #1 was picture perfect complete with a small blue expanding falling wedge for the left shoulder and a blue bearish rising wedge as the right shoulder. H&S #2 was very symmetrical as shown by the neckline symmetry line which shows the height for the left and right shoulders. Outside of the messy breakout and backtest, which happens sometimes, this chart is still very bearish looking.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
The Future of Natural Gas / Commodities / Natural Gas
MoneyMorning.com Dr. Kent Moors writes: On Thursday morning, I’ll be delivering my major address on the future of natural gas. The occasion is a high-powered meeting hosted by Dominion Transport at the beautiful Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in western Pennsylvania.
Attending will be more than 100 leading CEOs and other executives from principal gas production, transmission, distribution, and end using companies.
My keynote presentation is entitled “Natural Gas Moving Forward: LNG, Hubs, and Pricing Prospects.” And in it I address where liquid natural gas (LNG) prices have been… where they are now… and where they’re going.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
This “Pig” Just Made a Massive Bet on Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By Dan Steinhart
Stan Druckenmiller is going big on gold.
Druckenmiller is one of the world’s most successful and respected traders. As a hedge fund manager from 1986 to 2010, he generated an incredible average annual return of 30%.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Junk Bonds Call for Stock Market Crash ... / Stock-Markets / Financial Crash
We have looked at plenty enough evidence in recent weeks that a crash is looming for US markets, and now we are going to take a look at another important piece of evidence that we haven't previously considered - the Junk Bond market.
When confidence deteriorates Junk Bonds get sold off. A reason for this is that Junk Bond Holders are low on the list of creditors who can expect to be paid off in the event of corporate default, hence the name. They yield more because they carry more risk, so when risk threatens to rise or rises, savvy holders want out.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Gold, No Interest! / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Stronger than expected US retail sales data undercut some of the recent safe haven trades ( buying bonds, the yen and gold) sending all three lower in today’s session.
For the first two weeks of August, retails sales are up 1.7% versus a year ago and up 0.3% from July.
That got the “Fed is going to hike in September” talk starting up once more which of course send the Dollar higher and most commodities lower.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Blind Alleys and Techno-Fantasies / Politics / Social Issues
The majority of proposals made by those who acknowledge limits fail on at least one of the previous criteria, and often several, if not all of them. Solution space is smaller than we typically think. The most common approach is to insist on government policies intended to implement meaningful change by fiat. Even in the best of times, government policy is a blunt instrument which all too often achieves the opposite of its stated intention, and in contractionary times the likelihood of this increases enormously.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Silver Price Cycle Low – Now / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
The price of silver has been crushed during the last four years. Prices are ready to reverse. We will know soon enough after the High-Frequency-Traders have their way with prices for paper silver and gold on the CME. But consider:
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
UK CPI and GBPUSD vs TWI Divergence / Currencies / British Pound
Sterling hit fresh 2-month highs as UK inflation improved in July, with headline CPI edging up to 0.1% y/y from June's 0.0%, and beating the Bank of England's 0.0%. The notable increase was in core CPI, which rose to a 5-month high of 1.2% vs expectations of 0.9% and a June reading of 0.8%.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
What Credit Markets Are Telling Us About Stocks Now / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
MoneyMorning.com Michael E. Lewitt writes: Rather than trust markets to heal themselves, the world's central banks have polluted markets with flawed economic theories and trillions of dollars of debt. Rather than ignite economic growth as they had hoped, however, they have suffocated the global economy.
It began with the U.S. Federal Reserve's move to lower interest rates to zero seven years ago, followed by several bouts of quantitative easing.
This was followed by Mario Draghi's August 2012 declaration to do "whatever it takes" to defend the euro.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Global Stock Markets and Dow Jones Fire Warning Shot Across Investors Bow! / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Last week, the global equity markets were quite undecided. China’s and Japan’s equity prices have been moving higher. The Japanese Nikkei reached its highest level since 1996 on Tuesday, August 11th, but then pulled back at the end of the week. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng made a new monthly low and the Australian Market fell to a new 6-month low.
Europe was more decisive. Traders mostly sold stocks. The German DAX, London FTSE, and Zurich SMI all fell to monthly lows by mid-week and did not recover much by Friday August 14th’s close. In Russia, it was much different. Moscow’s MICEX index rallied to its highest mark in 3 months.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Riding the Energy Wave to the Future / Commodities / Energy Resources
“Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” – J. Paul Getty
This week’s yuan devaluation was big news, but it’s really part of a much bigger saga. Events around the globe are combining to create huge economic change over the next few years. We are watching giant, multidimensional chess games played by some master players.
Energy is the chessboard that connects all the players. What happens when the board changes shape in the middle of the game? If you don’t know the new energy landscape, you’ll have a hard time playing to a draw, much less winning.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
The Staggering Scope of the Next Financial Crisis And How It Will Hit / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2015
As you know, I’ve been calling for a bond market crisis for months now. That crisis has officially begun in Greece, and will be spreading in the coming months. Currently it’s focused in countries that cannot print their own currencies (the PIIGS in Europe, particularly Greece).
However, China and Japan are also showing signs of trouble and ultimately the bond crisis will be coming to the US’s shores.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Credit Indicates a Recession Is Here… And Possibly Even a Credit Crunch / Economics / Credit Crisis 2015
sThose looking for accurate data regarding the US economy should look into credit card applications and credit card company earnings.
Regarding the former, consider the recent rejections of credit applications data:
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Energy Demand Collapse Followed by Supply Collapse / Commodities / Crude Oil
As we have noted many times, energy is the master resource, and has been the primary driver of an expansion dating back to the beginning of the industrial revolution. In fossil fuels humanity discovered the ‘holy grail’ of energy sources – highly concentrated, reasonably easy to obtain, transportable and processable into many useful forms. Without this discovery, it is unlikely that any human empire would have exceeded the scale and technological sophistication of Rome at its height, but with it we incrementally developed the capacity to reach for the stars along an exponential growth curve.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Doomsday Clock Strikes One Minute To Midnight For Global Stock Market Crash / Stock-Markets / Financial Crash
It is only a matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty expectations and record valuations.
China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
How to Avoid Puerto Rico's Debt Crisis and Make Money on It / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2015
MoneyMorning.com Shah Gilani writes: Puerto Rico is desperately trying to reorganize its $72 billion debt, but it faces a unique hurdle…
You see, it's an unincorporated territory, not a state. It can't actually declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy.
Without those legal protections, the Caribbean island is clearly sunk.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Corporate Debt - Road To Oblivion In A Stocks Bear Market / Stock-Markets / Stocks Bear Market
Any article that starts with a quote from Jim Grant is guaranteed to be a fact based, common sense, reasoned analysis of our warped, debt saturated, over-valued, Federal Reserve rigged financial markets. John Hussman starts his weekly letter with this quote from Jim Grant:
Read full article... Read full article..."The way to wealth in a bull market is debt. The way to oblivion in a bear market is also debt, and nobody rings a bell." - James Grant
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
A Street Car Named U.S. Treasury Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
sIn the 1947 Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" as she is being carted off to the mental institution Blanche Dubois utters these famous words ... "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
And like Ms. Dubois, the United States has also come to depend on the kindness of strangers to fund a massive $18.3 trillion in debt.
But that kindness the US Treasury has come to depend upon may be waning. Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell in May for a second straight month. The Treasury Department reported total holdings were down 0.1% in May to $6.13 trillion. This comes after an even bigger 0.6% decline in April.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Stock Market Pause in the Downtrend / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend - Bull Market
sIntermediate trend - SPX may has started an intermediate correction
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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