Monday, December 26, 2016

Moment of Truth for US Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds

By: Gary_Savage

Moment of Truth for Bonds

Bonds are severely oversold. There should be a bounce but if it’s weak, or doesn’t last very long then prepare for a crash. I’ve never seen a bubble yet that popped gracefully.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Russian Military Plane Crash Spoils Putin's Christmas / New Year Aleppo Surprise Victory Visit / Politics / Syria

By: Nadeem_Walayat

President Vlad Putin planned surprise new years visit and Russian Orthodox Christmas (7th Jan) celebrations at formerly Syria's most populous city, Aleppo, which after 4 years of civil war and the recent Russian military backed onslaught has been turned to rubble. Nevertheless a celebratory Orthodox Christmas scene had been planned to the tunes of the Russian military band playing and singing patriotic songs with russian jets flying over, a military parade through cleared of rubble and white washed streets, all topped off with Vlad Putin's grand finale that follows in the footsteps of whom he was named after Vlad the Impaler, as the pinnacle of festivities will involve Vlad Putin disrobing and bathing in the blood of hundreds of dead Syrian children harvested earlier from the rubble of East Aleppo, leaving fellow Dictator Assad to look on whilst taking notes on how to truly frighten the people into obedience which Vlad Putin is the master of.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

6 Charts That Show We Are in a Long-Term Stocks Secular Bear Market / Stock-Markets / Stocks Bear Market

By: John_Mauldin

As I look out over the coming years, I am convinced that we’ll see the blowing up of the biggest bubbles in history—including those of government debt and government promises. And it’s not just in the US, but all over the world.

That will lead to an eventual global crisis of biblical proportions. Although, it isn’t clear what the immediate cause of the crisis will be.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

2 Charts That Debunk the Bullish Case for Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: John_Mauldin

There’s compelling evidence that US stocks are overvalued. Yet just in the last month, we saw investors react to the US election by bidding the benchmarks up to new all-time highs.

This implies they expect even higher prices next year. Can it happen?

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Greece’s Debt Problem Has Reached a Dangerous Point / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis

By: John_Mauldin

BY ALLISON FEDIRKA : Before the Italian banking crisis and referendum, before Brexit… there was Greece. Greece’s debt crisis was really the first public crack in the European Union’s armor and one that has yet to be repaired.

Readers who want to understand why anti-EU sentiment and nationalism have developed in many of these countries don’t have to look at migration or other controversial topics. Simply look at Greece and how it has fared after adopting the EU’s austerity terms.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

I Bet We’ll Get Four or More Interest Rate Hikes Next Year / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates

By: John_Mauldin

BY JARED DILLIAN : The fed funds target is now 0.50%–0.75%.¹ Hooray!

The Fed is finally, after eight years, normalizing interest rates.

The timing is awfully interesting, though—what a coincidence that the rate hike comes right after the election!

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Gold As A Percentage Of Global Financial Assets / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: I_M_Vronsky

In 2014 Total Global Assets Topped $105 TRILLION (i.e more than $105,000,000,000,000)

An astronomical amount by any standards. Interestingly, only a small fraction of this monumental amount has been allocated to gold investments. Here below is the record of gold investments since 1980. To be sure a brief history of gold investment demand will indubitably put our analysis into sharp perspective.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

The World Till 2021 – New Development Strategy, Alliance of India, Russia and America... / Politics / GeoPolitics

By: Dr_R_M_Mathew

...& Growing Crisis of the Islamic World

The next four years are strategically important for India, Iran, China, Russia and America that are going to redefine the Fate of the Global Economy and many Nations, especially the Islamic Countries and Islamic Terrorism. Along with the Demise of Globalism and Liberalism and the Rise of Populism in the West, including Germany, Traditional Economics or Science of Economics becomes a major causality for it has been reduced into mere Data Manipulations and Unrealistic Projections and Forecasting that have no practical relevance. Even the World Economic Forum cannot offer any solutions for the Global Economic Crisis other than making so many deliberations for the lack of creative ideas and visions.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Christmas Eve Online Sales 2016, Boxing Day High Street Sales Full List / Personal_Finance / Shopping

By: Nadeem_Walayat

Britain's Christmas high street sales frenzy is about to reach maximum intensity on Boxing day whilst most major retailers such as Next and PC World / Curry's will start their sales online on Christmas Eve so as to maximise profits from the the army of point and click armchair shoppers. Here is a comprehensive list of sales starting today, Christmas Eve and continuing into the high streets on Boxing day as well as those already well underway.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Donald’s Trump Card Facism 101 / Politics / US Presidential Election 2016

By: Richard_Mills

How did Donald Trump get elected? Can we pigeon hole Trump’s ideology?

Very few people expected Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination.

But Trump received more TV coverage than all the other candidates combined on his way to winning the nomination. According to mediaQuant it was the equivalent of $5.2bn worth of free airtime.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

US Dollar Euphoria and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: Zeal_LLC

The US dollar has rocketed higher since early November’s US presidential election, rivaling the massive gains seen in the stock markets.  With the world’s reserve currency catapulted to extreme secular highs, dollar euphoria has naturally exploded.  Traders are overwhelmingly betting the dollar’s strong upside will continue.  But this greed-drenched currency looks very toppy and ready to fall, which is very bullish for gold.

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.

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.

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.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Deutsche Bank Settlement: Seasonal Intraday Charts Provide Evidence for Gold Market Manipulation / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: Dimitri_Speck

Deutsche Bank trader: "u just said u sold on fix."
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.

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.)

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.