Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Two Charts That Argue Inflation, NOT Deflation, is Now the Dominant Trend / Economics / Inflation

By: Graham_Summers

The markets are moving into their first MAJOR inflationary shift in TEN years.

Perhaps the single best metric for measuring inflation vs. deflation in the bond markets is the TIPs to Long US Treasury ratio. In its simplest rendering when this ratio rises, it means inflation is on the rise. When it falls it means deflation is dominating the bond markets.

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

UK Pension Funds Performance Deteriorates in Q1 2018 / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement

By: MoneyFacts

New data from the latest Moneyfacts UK Personal Pension Trends Treasury Report has revealed deteriorating pension fund performance in Q1 2018 at a time when members of auto-enrolment schemes are seeing their mandatory minimum contribution rates rise from 1% to 3%.

The report shows how after a run of positive gains in the previous nine quarters the average pension fund registered a loss for the first time since Q3 2015, falling by 3.8%.

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Precious Metals Sector On a Long-term Buy Signal, Short term Mixed / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: The_Gold_Report

Technical analyst Jack Chan updates his gold and silver charts.

Our proprietary cycle indicator is up.

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

The Coming Silver Supply Crunch Is Worse Than You Know / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: GoldSilver

Jeff Clark : For data wonks like me, the annual Yearbooks from various gold and silver consultancies make for fun reading. You can always find little gems about what’s going on in the markets, and sometimes you can spot changes in trends early on. Seeing a compelling chart, especially one that’s not been widely reported, is almost as exciting as seeing my wife in a short skirt on date night.

Well, I’ve got a series of charts for you that point to a silver trend that is so entrenched in its development, so inevitable in its outcome, so inescapable in its consequences that it comes as close as one can get to a guarantee. And once fully underway, it will have major implications for the silver price, along with the availability of investment metal.

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

UK Local Elections 2018 Shock Predictions! Labour London Gains Offset by Regional Losses / ElectionOracle / UK Local Elections

By: Nadeem_Walayat

The mainstream press backed up by the polling industry has once more built themselves up into a frenzy of reporting with much certainty that the Conservatives are heading for an electoral blood bath in the local elections, with the London epicentre rippling out across the regions as Corbyn's Labour party is expected to build on last years shock General Election results that crippled Theresa May's government which has had the effect of throwing the Tories into a state of panic whilst many Labour councils are already counting their electoral chickens before their hatched. All whilst forgetting that the same pollsters and pundits got last years general election very badly wrong! And so one has to beg the question are they all badly wrong AGAIN? Which would be for SIXTH ELECTION IN A ROW!

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Warren Buffet: Stock Market Lesson In Passive Investment / InvestorEducation / Learning to Invest

By: Christopher_Quigley

Every year I religiously read Warren Buffett’s letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. I find them a treat,
a mine of information and knowledge. It always inspires me to review, in his famous introduction, how each year since 1965 he has been able to achieve such spectacular returns with a relatively simple long term investment strategy. Over the past 52 years Berkshire has returned a staggering 20.9% compound annual return. Thus 1,000 dollars invested with Mr. Buffett at the outset of his career is now worth 11,144,735 dollars. And what is the over-riding advice he gives to enable such fortunes to be made? The secret is stated boldly on page 13 of the 2017 newsletter:

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Bitcoin and Friends: The Next Five Years/The Coming DEX-verse / Currencies / Bitcoin

By: Mark_Blair

Remember when Bitcoin was anonymous?
Remember when ASICs were The Big Noo Thing?
Remember when it hadn’t occurred to us that (centralised) exchanges might pass our data to Tax Departments?

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

What Can Alchemists Say About Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

Alchemists are precious metals experts, aren’t they? So let’s see what we can learn from the latest issue of the Alchemist, the LBMA’s quarterly journal.

Silver Linings
Silver has been always in gold’s shadow. Could the accelerated and synchronized global growth finally boost silver? In his article, Jonathan Butler offers two arguments in favor of higher silver prices. First, in a world of synchronized growth, silver should outperform gold, as it has a much larger industrial base. In particular, the solar sector and vehicle electrification are very promising areas for silver demand. Second, silver seems to be undervalued. Historically, one needs 58 ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold, but now it would take around 80 ounces.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

Number of BTL Mortgate Market Deals Breach 2,000 for the Firt Time / Housing-Market / Buy to Let

By: MoneyFacts

The past couple of years have been turbulent for both landlords and buy-to-let (BTL) providers, given the significant changes to regulations and taxation that have occurred. Yet despite this, the latest research from moneyfacts.co.uk shows that the number of buy-to-let products has reached an all-time high – passing the 2000 mark for the first time on record.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

The Left Celebrates Commie Day / Politics / Social Issues

By: BATR

The first of May is "Commie Day" for the left. The systematic destruction of the American culture has been caused by the Marxists who want to call themselves Progressives. The Democrat Party sees a Bernie Sanders as a standard bearer of Lenin's ideology and a Hillary Clinton as an offspring of Stalin. There is no semblance of a loyal opposition or pretense that bipartisan compromise can be attained in a civilized manner. No; the Left has declared war on the traditional principles upon which American was established. Citizens of good will need to face the enemy within and admit that the Federal government has a Fifth column that wants to overturn the few remnants of the Republic and impose a full blown dictatorship of the ideological pure collectivists.  

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

Consumers Have Finally Become Bearish on Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Troy_Bombardia

The Consumer Confidence survey also measures what consumers think the stock market will do. This is essentially a sentiment survey for the stock market.

Consumers were bullish on the stock market from Trump’s election until this month. Whenever the stock market goes at least 1 year without consumers being bearish on the stock market, the stock market tends to go higher in the medium-long term (historically).

Here are the historical cases in which consumers became bearish on the stock market after being consistently bullish for at least 1 year.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

A Big Stock Market Shock is About to Start / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Submissions

Martin C writes: In the latest week, the busiest for first-quarter reports, several companies warned about or cited higher costs. Shares of all three companies declined even though their quarterly earnings were mostly strong. Investors will be alert for more signs of rising costs next week, which brings results from several big consumer names like Kellogg and market-cap leader Apple. Also on tap will be a Federal Reserve meeting, the April jobs report and data on wages and inflation. In the face of it, the earnings for the first quarter of this year that companies have been announcing are superb and far ahead of the most optimistic expectations. The S&P 500 companies in the US are on course for an almost unfathomably good year-on-year increase of 24.6 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters. A month ago, brokers were braced for an increase of 18.5 per cent. The first quarter was the first reporting period since U.S. President Donald Trump in March imposed a duty on imports of steel and aluminum. Prices for those and other commodities have risen sharply, with U.S. crude oil up 7.5 percent in the first quarter.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

The Least Known and Best Performing Precious Metal / Commodities / Palladium

By: MoneyMetals

Gold and silver have risen substantially off the price bottom put in just 2-½ years ago, but the gains have yet to attract much notice. Gold has gained roughly 28% and silver is up 20%.

Meanwhile, another metal has more than doubled since bottoming. This performance should have been more than enough to catch the attention of metals investors, if only they were watching. The metal is palladium and, for those who haven’t paid much attention, it is time for a brief update.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

A Gold Sector Fundamental View / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: Gary_Tanashian

With gold testing its 200 day moving average this morning I thought I’d reproduce the first part of the precious metals segment from week’s Notes From the Rabbit Hole (NFTRH 497), including a daily chart of gold at the end showing the anticipated SMA 200 test.

[edit] Steve Saville updates gold’s ‘true fundamentals’ here. Notice at the end what is not considered fundamentally material.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

Are Stock Market Shorts Being Shown The Door? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Avi_Gilburt

As the market continues to whipsaw market participants, it has certainly left many of you scratching your head.

As each day goes by, it offers me another opportunity to chuckle when I see so many attempts by pundits to try to explain what latest news events cause each whipsaw. And when they try to fit their square pegs into round holes, or, when they don’t have any pegs at all when there is no news to even attempt to explain a move, it just makes me wonder when these market participants will finally open their eyes as to how the market really works.

Monday, April 30, 2018

Silver Tiny Volume Signal, Big Price Implications / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: P_Radomski_CFA

The USD Index reversed in a quite clear way on Friday and gold rallied. It looked like a great bullish combination for the precious metals sector, but was it really one? Gold moved higher on volume that was lowest since the beginning of the year and this means that Friday’s rally shouldn’t be taken at its face value, but instead it should be closely inspected. Moreover, silver just did what was previously followed by big and volatile price moves in all recent cases. What can we really infer from it?

Monday, April 30, 2018

Big Banks Punish Loyal Savings Customers With Abysmal Interest Rates / Personal_Finance / Savings Accounts

By: MoneyFacts

Savers who turn to the most familiar banks* to hunt for a good savings deal may feel it’s a logical place to start, but they may want to think twice. If savers are looking for a top rate on an easy access account, then they are likely to be disappointed if they ignore the less familiar brands.

In fact, according to the latest moneyfacts.co.uk research, the difference between the best easy access account on the market versus the worst big bank rate would cost savers £250 a year in interest (based on a £20,000 initial deposit). As rates continue to improve away from the biggest banks*, it may be a good time for savers to reconsider more unfamiliar brands to get the best possible return.

Monday, April 30, 2018

US Bond Market 10-Year Yield: From A 35-Year Bear To A Generational Bull Market / Interest-Rates / US Bonds

By: Mike_Paulenoff

In early March, 10-year yield was circling 2.87%. Now it is circling 3.00% for the first time in 4 years. The increase is probably shocking to many analysts and investors. Neither economic nor inflation data provide adequate justification for yield to be higher than it was two months ago. But there are times when the contradicting longer-term technical set-up should be heeded, even when the trend lacks strong support from lagging tabular data.

Monday, April 30, 2018

Is Jeff Gundlach Correct on Gold’s $1000 Upside? / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018

By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne

It was music to gold bug ears.

We’ve all heard the seemingly shocking or outrageous price targets for Gold. So it’s not new.

But this time from a non gold pusher. Someone with credibility in the larger financial world and a track record to boot.

Gundlach’s comment was included in every piece of Gold literature that recently crossed my desk. No doubt, if Gold starts breaking to the upside, Gundlach’s quote will be used by aggressive marketers and publishers. But I digress.

Monday, April 30, 2018

Gold And Interest Rates – There Is No Correlation / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018

By: Kelsey_Williams

Over and over again, the following statement or something similar continues to find its way into commentary about gold:

“…prospects of higher US interest rates have the ability to limit upside gains. It must be kept in mind that Gold is a zero-yielding asset that tends to lose its allure in a high-interest rate environment”  

A variation of that statement:

“Because gold doesn’t bear interest, it struggles to compete when interest rates rise.”