Monday, June 04, 2018
US Tariffs vs China, EU, NAFTA – and the Rest of the World? / Politics / Protectionism
After months of trade war with China, US subjected its EU and NAFTA partners to steel and aluminum tariffs. EU leaders missed a year seeking appeasement with Trump’s protectionism. It’s time to defend the multilateral trading regime.
Unsurprisingly, the European Union (EU), Canada and Mexico have lambasted the US steel and aluminum tariffs. European Commission (EC) President Jean-Claude Juncker criticized Trump’s tariffs and pledged retaliation in due time. French President Emmanuel Macron and German government spokesman called the move unlawful. In Britain, the Brexit proponents and opposition quickly blamed each other for the tariffs. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the tariffs would “harm industries and workers on both sides of the Canada-US border.”
Monday, June 04, 2018
Stock Market One Final Pull-back? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
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 2873 is likely to continue until about early June.
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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Monday, June 04, 2018
Three Key Elements Will Drive Stocks Higher Into Year End / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Last week was a roller-coaster ride for traders and investors. After a long holiday weekend, traders were greeted with concerns originating in Italy regarding political stability and the potential that any further issues could result in a collapse of the EU. Even though the risk of this happening was somewhat minor, the US markets tanked near 2% as fear seemed to override common sense. The rest of this week has been a wild ride of price rotation within a range. We’ve been reading all types of news and comments regarding all types of “what if” scenarios from analysts and researchers while scratching our heads at some of the comments.
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Sunday, June 03, 2018
The Stock Market Ain't Broke / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
There are some big H&S bottoms on several of the US stock market indexes that I have maybe only shown you once around the time the necklines were broken. When I first discovered them I wasn’t sure they would play out so I just kept them on the back burner to see what would happen.
I’ve mentioned recently how important it is to have a game plan to follow so you know that when the charts change, then your game plan needs to be adjusted to the new information the charts are showing. Sometimes just a little adjustment is all that is needed and as long as your game plan keeps play out you just go with it until something changes.
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Sunday, June 03, 2018
Stock Market Short term Downside Limited, Medium-Long Term is Bullish / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
As always, the economy’s fundamentals determine the stock market’s medium-long term outlook. Technicals determine the stock market’s short-medium term outlook. Here’s why the stock market’s short term downside is limited while the medium-long term is bullish.
As always, we go from the long term, to the medium term, to the short term.
*A recap of this week’s thoughts and market studies.
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Sunday, June 03, 2018
Zimbabwe High Court Overturns Reserve Bank’s Decision To Ban Cryptocurrency / Currencies / BlockChain
In a stunning display of cryptocurrency’s potential to liberate humanity, Zimbabwe just lifted its ban on the digital money after its own Reserve Bank failed to appear in court to defend themselves.
It all began on May 12 when the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) arrogantly “issued a directive to all financial institutions to stop all forms of transactions related to cryptocurrencies and to wind down all accounts tied to cryptocurrencies within 60 days.”
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Sunday, June 03, 2018
Climate Change Mass Extinction - Birds, Bees and Bugs: Going Going Gone / Politics / Climate Change
The twitter of birds, the buzzing of bees, the drone of insects are all welcome signs of spring, but could species reduction or extinction, made worse by climate change, mute these sounds to the point where we will have to install apps on our phones to mimic them?
The idea of a silent spring might seem a tad alarmist, but the fate of the world’s wildlife - both land-based and marine - is not looking good. According to research by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, over the past 40 years the number of wild animals living on Earth has been cut in half. Among the most hard-hit species are forest elephants in central Africa, where deaths by poachers now exceed birth rates, the Hoolock gibbon in Bangladesh, the European meadow and asp vipers, grey partridges in the UK and curlew sandpipers in Australia.
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Saturday, June 02, 2018
The EU Respond Angerly to Trump’s Steel and Aluminium Tariffs / Politics / Protectionism
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Saturday, June 02, 2018
Making Italy Great Again / Politics / Italy
This week, market watchers around the world are justifiably fixated with the high-stakes, high-drama political developments unfolding in Italy. While a political crisis in the world’s 9th largest economy (International Monetary Fund figures, 4/17/18) would normally not be enough to cause an international meltdown, given how thin the global economic ice has become as a result of ever-increasing debt loads, even small disruptions can create systemic problems. But from my perspective, what makes the Italian drama so interesting is that it parallels so precisely developments in the United States. It’s amazing that more Americans do not realize, that when looking at Italy, they are looking at a fun house mirror reflection of the United States.
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Saturday, June 02, 2018
Silver Mining Stocks SIL ETF Fundamentals / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
The major silver miners’ stocks remain deeply out of favor, languishing near multi-year lows. Of course that reflects investors’ lack of interest in silver itself. It has greatly lagged, not following gold higher like usual over the past year and a half. That’s really torpedoed silver-stock sentiment, making for a challenging environment for silver miners. But they’re weathering it as their recently-released Q1’18 results show.
Four times a year publicly-traded companies release treasure troves of valuable information in the form of quarterly reports. Companies trading in the States are required to file 10-Qs with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by 45 calendar days after quarter-ends. Canadian companies have similar requirements. In other countries with half-year reporting, many companies still partially report quarterly.
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Saturday, June 02, 2018
Buckle Up Deflationists… You’re Getting Taken to the Cleaners / Economics / Inflation
The current view trending in social media as well as most of the financial media is that Italy is about to trigger a systemic collapse of Europe.
Those proposing this theory are using charts of Italy’s bond yields and stock market that focus on the last few years when the country was being priced at a ridiculously low risk.
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Saturday, June 02, 2018
Is the EU About to Collapse? Stocks Don’t Think So / Politics / European Stock Markets
The “Italy Crisis” is over.
I know the headlines read as though Italy was collapsing and the Euro is about to implode. But the headlines are reporting on yesterday’s news.
The collapse of the Italy government means a new election. That, in turn, means a pro-Euro politician heading Italy. And that in turn means the Italy Crisis is over.
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Saturday, June 02, 2018
Crude Oil Price Bulls’ Wishes vs. Reality / Commodities / Crude Oil
Wednesday’s rally that followed Tuesday’s reversal gave hope for a sustainable move higher. But only to those, who focus on the daily price movement only, without taking bigger picture into consideration. As we explained last Friday, there were bearish implications of the weekly candlestick pattern even before it was completed. In the following analyses we wrote the same about the monthly candlestick and since May is over, the candlestick is completed, and we can say that our previous expectations were met. What do the more long-term patterns indicate for the crude oil’s future and how much can we trust the recent rally?
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Friday, June 01, 2018
This is Italy Not Sparta / Politics / Italy
“European Stocks Surge Celebrating New Spanish, Italian Governments”, says a Zero Hedge headline. “Markets Breathe Easier As Italy Government Sworn In”, proclaims Reuters. And I’m thinking: these markets are crazy, and none of this will last more than a few days. Or hours. The new Italian government is not the end of a problem, it’s the beginning of many of them.
And Italy is far from the only problem. The new Spanish government will be headed by Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, who manoeuvred well to oust sitting PM Rajoy, but he also recently saw the worst election result in his party’s history. Not exactly solid ground. Moreover, he needed the support of Catalan factions, and will have to reverse much of Rajoy’s actions on the Catalunya issue, including probably the release from prison of those responsible for the independence referendum.
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Friday, June 01, 2018
Once Again, Gold Is Not Commodit / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
We know this… we really know it. This is awkward. Gold is a metal. This is why it used to be money for thousands of years: it was rare, tangible and its supply couldn’t be increased at will. An ideal store of value. So why are we saying that gold is not commodity?
We mean here not the physical attributes of gold, but the approach to valuing it. You can model it either as a currency, or as a commodity. From the investment point of view, we always treated gold as a currency, so in the previous part of this edition of the Market Overview, we discussed – in line with that approach – the three most important drivers affecting the price of gold. Now, we will present the final critique of treating gold as a commodity.
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Friday, June 01, 2018
Gold Stocks Back in the Volatility Saddle Again / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
Precious metals expert Michael Ballanger dissects his volatility trades.
One week ago today, I made the following commentary:
Read full article... Read full article..."Finally, I am officially revisiting the "volatility trade" (VIX: CBOE Volatililty Index) but unlike February where I used the UVXY (ProShares Trust Ultra VIX Short) as my proxy for the increase in volatility, I am using the TVIX (VelocityShares Daily 2X VIX ST ETN) because it is a double leverage ETF for the VIX but has better leverage than the UVXY. UVXY used to be a triple-leverage play on volatility but the slippage due to its dependence on futures became too difficult to navigate and they cut the leverage from 3:1 to 2:1. I had a 250% gain on this in February but gave back 9.84% in April. I am long 50% of the TVIX position from yesterday at $4.95 and am using the opening this morning to add another 25% in the $5.25 range. I will again use a 10% stop-loss but since the 52-week low is $4.60, that will be the exit level. Upside target will be $8.00 remembering of course that the 52-week high was $26.56.
The month of May is rapidly coming to a close, which starts what is historically the worst six months of the year. With the situations in Turkey and Italy worsening, with the North Korean summit in question, central banks engaged in "quantitative tightening," rising oil prices, and the possibility that the China-U.S. trade talks go south, markets are going to be in peril as summer illiquidity arrives. For this reason, gold "should" be the go-to asset, but I am banking on volatility rather than gold as the preferred method of riding the correction."
Friday, June 01, 2018
Here Is Next Week's News In Advance -- How Will You Trade It? / InvestorEducation / Learn to Trade
The great majority of market participants believe that "the fate of markets is inextricably intertwined with the ebb and flow of geopolitics." So, if I share with you “secret” news that will hit the wires next week, you should be able to make a killing with such information. Right?
While I strongly disagree with this proposition, at least based upon my in-depth study of decades of stock market history, this perspective is so engrained in the investment process of advisors and analysts alike that it is followed even more than the Bible.
So, let’s test this proposition.
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Friday, June 01, 2018
A Purrrfect Gold Price Setup! / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Featured is the weekly gold chart. The green arrows point to ‘upside reversals’, developing after price dropped below the 50WMA. The blue arrows point to a positive follow-through, following an upside reversal. A similar situation back in December enabled gold to rise for 5 out of 6 weeks! The current rise has the potential to jump above the $1365 resistance area with a target at $1395. The RSI is neutral, but the A/D line is positive.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, June 01, 2018
What is More Reliable than the Andrews Pitchfork? / InvestorEducation / Technical Analysis
When my friend Professor Alan Hall Andrews was most active as a trader and writer it was prior to 1980. After examining his writings and use (in the 1970’s) of the various lines related to the median lines verses the action reaction lines, it is easy to come to the conclusion that he favored the Action Reaction lines over what is commonly referred to as the Andrews Pitchfork. To answer this question for myself I examined various concepts that Andrews taught in his writings, shortly prior to his passing on found that most of them were median line related. This was when he came up with the modified Schiff line which is actually a derivative of a trend line. Trend lines are lines he advocated using along with the Action Reaction Lines in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
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Thursday, May 31, 2018
Emerging Market Meltdown Could Undermine Oil Price Rally / Commodities / Crude Oil
Saudi Arabia and Russia just destroyed the oil price rally, potentially putting an end to all the speculation about what the group might do next. But higher production doesn’t necessarily mean higher oil prices are entirely out of the question, and in fact, the oil market is still faced with a ton of uncertainty.
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