Thursday, August 20, 2015
The Fed Talks And The Market Tanks. That’s Different / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: John_Rubino
Normally there’s a distinct pattern to the impact of Federal Reserve statements on the financial markets. The tone of equities trading in particular starts to improve as the moment of the announcement approaches; the words turn out to be blandly positive, full of promises of easy money and upbeat forecasts; and share prices soar for a day or two. It’s been thus for most of the past six years, leading large numbers of new investors and recently-minted analysts and traders to see the Fed as a modern version of Plato’s philosopher king, wielding absolute power to achieve perfect justice in the form of rising asset prices.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Shorting Stocks - Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Cold / Companies / Investing 2015
By: John_Mauldin
Back when I was fifteen and in gifted and talented camp, I found myself on the wrong side of Rick. Funny thing about gifted and talented camps—by process of elimination, eventually you will find the least gifted guy there, and that might have been him.
Rick was fond of wearing Umbro shorts with boxers hanging out of the bottom, and carrying a lacrosse stick pretty much wherever he went. Every time I saw him, I had this mental image of Moe, the bully from Calvin and Hobbes. I half expected him to call me “Twinky.”
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Trumping the Federal Debt Without Playing the Default Card / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Ellen_Brown
In a post on "Sovereign Man" dated August 14th, Simon Black argued that Donald Trump may be the right man for the presidency:
Read full article... Read full article...[T]here's one thing that really sets him apart, that, in my opinion, makes him the most qualified person for the job:
Thursday, August 20, 2015
SPX Stock Index Breaking Down / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
SPX broke below its prior low at 2052.09. There may not be much of a bounce this time since this appears to be a third wave scenario.
ZeroHedge comments, “Small Caps hitting 6 month lows, S&P swinging red year-to-date, and Dow near 7-month lows... but remember China doesn't matter and Fed is priced in...”
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Another Day Younger and Deeper in Debt / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: John_Mauldin
My friend Neil Howe, author of Generations, The Fourth Turning, and other books and president of Saeculum Research, joins us today in Outside the Box with a succinct, eye-opening essay on generational differences in debt levels and attitudes towards debt.
I often write about the problems that come with overindebtedness, but we’re usually talking about public debt, here in the US or abroad. But personal or household debt in America is nearly as massive as government debt, as this chart shows:
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Drown Your Stock Market Sorrows With Pizza, Wings and Beer / Companies / Investing 2015
By: Investment_U
Matthew Carr writes: The markets have been wobbly. A long-boiling currency war is starting to bubble up. On top of that, China’s markets are hitting the skids as its economy slows. Japan’s economy is sputtering, too. And Greece is a toxin.
The S&P 500 topped the 2,100 mark for the first time on February 17. Here we are six months later... still hovering at that level.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
The Ultimate Insurance Against Financial Disaster / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2015
By: DailyWealth
By Brian Hunt: You wake up in the morning, turn on the news, and get a sick feeling in your stomach...
Thursday, August 20, 2015
The Global Economy’s Health Is Not That Complicated / Economics / Global Economy
By: Chris_Vermeulen
The Federal Reserve Bank has printed trillions of dollars to monetize US government debt just to keep the government afloat. Any significant rise in interest rates will probably decimate US government finances, the fragile housing market and in the bond market it will cause a financial catastrophe through interest rate derivatives.
This is a solid reason why the Fed will not raise any rates in any foreseeable future.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Silver – More Evidence of a Price Bottom / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: DeviantInvestor
Silver prices hit a low of about $14.33 on July 24 after High Frequency Traders had run stops that week. It has happened before and will again. Occasionally they will run stops going up, not down. The gold to silver ratio has been hovering around 75.
That ratio has a long history of volatility. The ratio is high when silver prices are low and as silver prices push higher, the ratio drops. Note the graph of the gold to silver ratio using weekly data for ten years.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Precious Metals Microcosm Expanding / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Gary_Tanashian
NFTRH 353 introduced the idea of a Macrocosm, a planetary representation of elements that need to come into place for a real investment stance on the gold stock sector (as opposed to the imagined elements cooked up by perma-bulls over the last few years). The Macrocosm idea came to me when the gold sector was acting firmly counter-cyclical on a day that most other markets were suffering. Then it happened again.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Inflation - Don’t Be Fooled By Our Current Price Stability / Economics / Inflation
By: Frank_Shostak
The yearly rate of growth of the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index adjusted for food and energy stood at 1.3 percent in June — the same figure as in May. Note that on average since the beginning of this year the yearly rate of growth stood at 1.3 percent. Many economists have expressed satisfaction that the yearly rate of growth has been stable so far notwithstanding that it stood below the Fed’s target of 2 percent.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Stock Market Negative Expectations Following Yesterday's Retreat / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: Paul_Rejczak
Briefly: In our opinion, speculative short positions are favored (with stop-loss at 2,140, and profit target at 1,980, S&P 500 index)
Our intraday outlook is bearish, and our short-term outlook is bearish:
Intraday outlook (next 24 hours): bearish
Short-term outlook (next 1-2 weeks): bearish
Medium-term outlook (next 1-3 months): neutral
Long-term outlook (next year): bullish
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Two Tactics for Bigger Biotech Investing Profits / Companies / BioTech
By: ...
MoneyMorning.com Ernie Tremblay writes: Over the past six months, we've seen the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index, an indicator for the entire sector, take some wild swings up and down, often by as much as 10% from week to week.
That's in stark contrast to the previous half-year, when we experienced a relatively steady upward swell.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Moving Toward a Geopolitical Marketplace / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Jay Ogilvy writes: This column frames a question to which I do not have the answer. Or think of it as a historical agenda: How can we bring the logic of free market exchange into the domain of geopolitical conflict?
Why would we want to do such a thing? It's not simply a matter of substituting gold for guns, or nonviolent exchange for violent exchange. The question I am posing is not based on some utopian hope for perpetual peace. The distinction I want to focus on is the difference between zero-sum conflict and positive-sum exchange.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
What's Really At Stake With The Iran Nuclear Deal / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: OilPrice_Com
Recently, I wrote on these pages that a remarkable turnaround was taking place in the President's fortunes. It's an impressive display of rising from the depths of falling popularity last fall, and it is starting to be felt in many areas, with major impacts on the future of energy. At his lowest point, the U.S. President was widely regarded as a lame duck, shedding influence and power, and on a down-hill slide.
This was followed by a number of embarrassments, with one of the worst coming from Russia, when it chose to provide sanctuary to Edward Snowden who revealed that the U.S. was hacking the strategic communications of its closest allies.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Stock Market More Bearish Behavior.... 17,300 Dow Important Watch / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: Jack_Steiman
Today was fascinating. Truly fascinating, and certainly not boring. The market plunged early on as the European markets fell hard. We gapped down and continued to fall hard. After getting close to oversold on the short-term sixty-minute charts we noticed a small rally ensue into the FOMC at 2 PM Eastern Time. It stated that the economy hadn't quite gotten to a level where they'd feel good about slowly raising rates. The market absolutely exploded, with a twenty handle S&P 500 move up in a matter of minutes. The market looked ready to rock up, but something funny happened along the way. The market hit gaps, and the selling exploded back in taking the market right back down.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Did China Kick-Start A New Bull Market In Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: SecularInvestor
Many have written about the devaluation of the Chinese currency last week, in particular its causes and consequences.
In mainstream media, most opinions are centered around the weakness of the Chinese economy which is now growing less than 7%. Logically, they argue, China wants to stimulate exports and stabilize the currency by ‘de-pegging’ it from a strengthening dollar.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Shanghai and DAX-30 Stock Indices Dance around 200-DMA / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: Ashraf_Laidi
Overnight, China central planners saved the 200-DMA in the Shanghai Composite, with an intraday 6.7% recovery following an earlier 5% decline. This is especially crucial as the index held above its 200-DMA since Jul 23, 2014. The latest selling pressure may have resulted by three consecutive daily gains in the Chinese yuan, following media assault from the rest of the world on the day of the CNY devaluation. Coincidently, the Shanghai Composite's late Wednesday session recovery emerged on the day the CNY depreciated for the first time four days.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Will UK Interest Rate Rises Crash House Prices? / Housing-Market / UK Housing
By: Nadeem_Walayat
UK interest rates have flat lined at 0.5% for 78 straight months, that now post the general election has market attention turning towards the prospects for the first of a series of interest rates hikes as signaled by the Bank of England. Firstly, understand this fundamental fact that interest rates at 0.5% has been a PANIC measure. The Bank of England has been in a state of perpetual PANIC for over the past 6 years of which 0.5% interest rates was just the first step towards propping up Britain's bankrupt banking system, the second step was the £500 billion or so of Quantitative Easing or money printing that has been stuffed into every orifice of the bankrupt banks, and the list goes on with capital injections and the Funding for Lending Scheme which has succeeded in eroding the purchasing power of savings (stealth theft) since it was first implemented since Mid 2012, ALL to prop up the Bank of England's banking sector brethren.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Crude Oil Energy Markets and Jobs Disintegrating / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Dan_Norcini
The US Energy Information Administration released their weekly data this morning as usual. The reaction to the data from crude oil was anything but the usual. Most everyone in the industry was looking for a draw in crude oil stockpiles especially after yesterday afternoon’s API data showed a reduction in supplies.