Friday, July 13, 2018
Berkshire Hathaway Stock Aiming for Recovery / Companies / Company Chart Analysis
Berkshire Hathaway (Class A NYSE: BRK.A – Class B NYSE: BRK.B) is currently the seventh largest company in the S&P 500 Index by market capitalization. The company ,lead by Warren Buffett, has averaged an annual growth in book value of 19.0% to its shareholders since 1965.
Berkshire Hathaway Class B NYSE: BRK.B is one of the main stock within the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund XLF. Year-to-date, the whole financial sector is still pointing in the negative side and not seeing any profit yet.
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Friday, July 13, 2018
Gold Standard Requirements & Currency Crisis / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
The United States has three requirements in returning to the Gold Standard. They will be extremely difficult to achieve. They each serve as essential requirements in a criterion. All three are urgently needed. The challenge is formidable for the nation to remain as a leading player in the global economy. The United States stands alone in volume of national debt. Many place the blame on the social net like welfare, Social Security, and other measures. However, the biggest element is clearly the military budget, hardly for defense in the last two decades. As CEO Jack Ma of Alibaba stated so succinctly, the USGovt has spent $25 trillion on the military with nothing to show for it except decayed infra-structure and global animosity for its aggression. A major item in recent years for the deficits has been Medicare, which is full of fraud and waste. Another major item is the raft of pensions like for government service, judicial service, and military service.
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Friday, July 13, 2018
Focus on the Greenback, Will USD Fall Below Euro 1.6? / Currencies / Forex Trading
Although last week’s decline took the USD Index under the late June’s lows, currency bulls didn’t break down with this deterioration and responded to their rivals fairly in previous days. Thanks to their determination, the greenback has wiped out most of the recent decline, which in combination with several other positive factors about which we wrote in today's Forex Trading Alert suggests that ...
Before, we analyze the current situation in our currency pairs, let’s examine the short-term picture of the USD Index.
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Friday, July 13, 2018
Stock Market Outlook 2018 - Bullish or Bearish / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. Arthur SchopenhauerFinancial experts continue to state that the markets are going to crash, even though their record since this bull market started back in 2009 has been dismal to the say the least. To complicate matters, some of these same experts suddenly jump ship and start to paint a bullish picture until the markets start to pull back. Then they falsely assume that the markets are going to crash and start singing the “market is going to crash” song again.
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Friday, July 13, 2018
Rising Inflation is Not Bearish for Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Inflation is on the rise. Yesterday’s CPI reading saw inflation rise 2.8% year-over-year.
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Friday, July 13, 2018
Bitcoin Picture Less Than Pretty / Currencies / Bitcoin
The move up seemed to be continuing and the first impression was that we were seeing a first period of appreciation in some time. But the operative word here is “seemed.” If we take a closer look at what the current environment really is, the picture is far less pretty.
Bitcoin has been around for close to a decade now. Yet we haven’t seen much in the way of research on the Bitcoin network and the principles governing it. Sure, there have been studies analyzing the system from an economic point of view, but their number has been low relative to other topics covered by economic research. In other words, Bitcoin hasn’t been researched that much by people from academia. Against such a backdrop, it is interesting to see new papers taking on the problem of incentives in the Bitcoin network. In an article on the MIT Technology Review website, we read:
Friday, July 13, 2018
How International Observers Undervalue the Chinese Bond Market / Interest-Rates / China
Criticism is typical of vibrant international media. Yet, prejudiced biases in financial matters have the potential to harm investors worldwide. The Chinese bond market is a case in point.Not only is China’s bond market growing explosively, but it has become diversified and provides broad investment options to both Chinese and foreign investors.
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Thursday, July 12, 2018
Stocks Trying to Break Higher Again, Will They? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
The S&P 500 index retraced some of its recent advance yesterday, as investors reacted to overnight trade tariffs announcement. Is this a new downtrend? Or just a downward correction before another leg higher? There are still two possible medium-term scenarios.
The U.S. stock market indexes lost between 0.6% and 0.9% on Wednesday, retracing some of their recent advance, as investors reacted to new trade tariffs announcement. The S&P 500 index has bounced off the resistance level of around 2,800. It currently trades 3.4% below the January's 26th record high of 2,872.87. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.9% and the technology Nasdaq Composite lost 0.6% on Wednesday.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
The Rise and Fall of Global Trade – Redux / Politics / Protectionism
Ilargi: Someone linked to this almost 8 year old article from Nicole (July 19 2010), on Twitter. And yes, it’s even more relevant now than it was when she wrote it. So here’s a re-run:
… the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 in the US, which drastically raised tariffs on imports, lead to retaliation by trading partners, and the resulting trade war dropped global trade by 66% between 1929 and 1934.
One more comment from me: Trump may be on to something with some of his tariff actions, but he risks having the US run headfirst into the brittleness of just-in-time supply lines.
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Thursday, July 12, 2018
Corporate Earnings Q2 2018 Will Probably be Strong. What This Means for Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Earnings expectations for Q2 2018 are high. Analysts expect the S&P 500’s earnings to grow 20% year-over-year. This leaves some investors and traders “worried” that the bar has been set too high, setting up for a disappointment.
I think that this earnings season will be strong and continue to beat expectations.
Why?
Because companies (on balance) almost ALWAYS beat their earnings expectations.
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Thursday, July 12, 2018
Is the Relative Strength in Gold Miners to Gold Price Significant? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
It has been a tough spring and summer for precious metals. Gold failed to breakout when it had the chance and it closed the second quarter in ominous and weak fashion. It was the lowest monthly close in more than a year. Silver has performed better but only because it has not declined to the degree Gold has. The one technical positive for the sector is the positive divergence in the miners. They did not make new lows in the second quarter. That is encouraging but only time will tell us how sustainable and significant that might be.
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Thursday, July 12, 2018
Gold Breaking Below This Point Could Be Fatal / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Shortly after gold fell to $1,046 in December 2015, I called for a bear market rally that ranged from $1,375 to $1,428.That low mark of $1,375 has been tested three times since without being able to break above.
That’s not a good sign…
Gold has been steadily down since the third test on April 11th.
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Thursday, July 12, 2018
One Drawback to the US Real Estate Bubble / Housing-Market / US Housing
I’ve been ranting for weeks now about it… People don’t understand that sky-high home prices are bad for countries, cities, businesses, and consumers.And only the 62% of people who already own homes are feeling the “bliss” of the bubble. They’re the ones who want prices to keep going up so they get something for next to nothing…
There’s another side effect of this housing bubble. We’ve seen it in the bubbliest areas for years…
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Thursday, July 12, 2018
Live Cattle Commodity Trading Analysis / Commodities / Livestock
Pattern – a downtrend is clearly in process while the action since 2017 looks corrective in nature. I believe this corrective phase still has a little more time left before the downtrend resumes. Bollinger Bands – price has been finding resistance from the middle band but I favour price to overcome it shortly and head up to the upper band where the next lower high can form.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Gold’s & Silver’s Reversals’ Reversal / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
In yesterday’s analysis, we discussed how meaningful gold and silver’s pre-market decline was given a relatively small move in the USD Index. The implications were quite bearish for the PM market, especially that we had just seen a target being reached in gold stocks. And because mining stocks had just underperformed gold for the first time in weeks. Yet, before the day was over, the USD, gold and silver had all reversed and erased most of their daily moves. Does it make the outlook bullish again? Is gold still likely to reach $1,300 shortly?
No. The USD Index indeed reversed its course, but the precious metals’ initial reaction shows how vulnerable they are with regard to the rallies in the USD Index. This is not the kind of reaction that one wants to see when keeping a long position. It’s the one that is preferred while holding a short one.
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Failure of US Supreme Court Opinions / Politics / US Politics
Now that Brett Kavanaugh has been selected by President Trump to be the next Supreme Court Justice, the gladiator games of the confirmation process begins. Much of the attention will focus on the bitter hysteria that the Never Trump lunatics exhibit as they regress even further into denial. Those supporters who demand a Living Constitution are in a panic. They see the gains they have made over decades are fading with a court of Originalists and fear that Textualism will become the standard for the Supreme Court. The self-proclaimed enlightened zealots contend they are social justice warriors. In actuality they protect the corrupt institutions, practices and policies that progressives profess they oppose.
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
The Value of Bitcoin / Currencies / Bitcoin
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
How NOT to Become a Casualty in the War on Cash / Currencies / War on Cash
Lots of bullion investors wonder if the metal they hold might one day be needed for barter and trade. They bought gold and silver, at least in part, as a form of insurance. It just might come in handy in an extreme circumstance such as a currency crisis of the sort Venezuelans are grappling with right now.
However, a hyper-inflationary collapse in the dollar isn’t the only dire scenario to insure against.
It is now clear that the dollar, and the financial network it runs on, is a mechanism for controlling people who don’t toe the government line.
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
America a Nation Built on Lies / Politics / US Politics
“The greatest want of the world is the want of men — men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.” – Ellen G. White
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
China, Asia and Emerging Markets Could Result In Chaos / Stock-Markets / Emerging Markets
Recently, quite a bit of news has been originating from Malaysia, China and other areas of South East Asia. Much of it is concerns with multi-billion dollar projects and excessive corruption and graft. Malaysia is taking the lead with this issue so far with the new Mahathir administration. Yet, we believe these issues are far-reaching and could result in quite a bit of market turmoil over the next few months – possibly much longer.
What is at risk is the exposure of “cooked books” across much of China, India and likely throughout the globe with infrastructure and real estate projects that were designed to boost numbers while hiding real economic concerns. You may remember we alerted our members and the general public to this concern in March 2018 – nearly 4 months ago in this blog post. If you have not read our multi-part research post regarding how China has set itself up for a massive economic collapse, please take a minute to read all of our earlier research.
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