Friday, November 01, 2019
‘Power to the People’ and Mining Metals and Minerals / Commodities / Metals & Mining
The 1960s and 70s were decades of incredible social upheaval.
Fed up with wars, governments out of touch with their ideals, authority figures who didn’t get them, the “flower children” of the '60s took to the streets to demand equal rights for women, civil liberties for black Americans, an end to President Johnson and Nixon’s Vietnam quagmire - all fueled by a powerful new popular culture that called for peace and celebrated the freedom of the individual to do as he/ she pleased.
Fifty years on, the world has changed in ways the “hippy generation” could scarcely imagine.
Protests today tend to be in developing countries, places where greed, graft and corruption mix with inequality in a toxic brew that frequently boils over into the streets, and is just as often violently suppressed. I’m alluding here to the Arab Spring that demanded the reform of oppressed societies, but has for the most part failed to deliver - just look at Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
In the West it’s not so much regime change people are after, as a change in the way governments conduct themselves. Consider the mass demonstrations in Hong Kong directed at the former British colony’s Chinese overlords, or global climate change protests. In the US, bad memories of the 1960s race riots were stirred up when racists and anti-racists confronted one another in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Friday, November 01, 2019
Near-term bearish signs for Bitcoin Cash / Currencies / Bitcoin
Summary
- Bearish doji candlestick pattern occurs after seven days up.
- Occurs on test of neckline of large bearish head & shoulders topping pattern.
- Potentially significant drop possible to below most recent swing low.
Friday, November 01, 2019
Fed Interest Cuts Rates, Causing Gold Price to See-Saw / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
Yesterday, that was already the third time this year when the Fed cut interest rates. In response, the price of gold erased earlier losses. That sounds a bit fishy. What is going on?
Fed Lowers Interest Rates by 25 Basis Points
Yesterday, the FOMC published the monetary policy statement from its latest meeting that took place on October 29-30th. In line with expectations, the U.S. central bank cut the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, for the third time in 2019 already:
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Friday, November 01, 2019
Funding Will Be Difficult for European Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Beyond 2022 / Companies / SME
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Thursday, October 31, 2019
DJIA Stock Market Technical Trend Analysis / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
TREND ANALYSIS
Short-term Trend Analysis
The Dow bounced from trendline support targeting resistance at 27,300 which it failed to reach before turning lower.The overall pattern is that of a converging triangle towards a breakout point. Where the ultimate direction of the breakout is not clear. The immediate trend targets the support trend line currently at around 26,000.
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Thursday, October 31, 2019
How Trump Tariff Trade Wars Worsen US Trade Deficit / Economics / Protectionism
Since 2018, Trump's trade wars have made US trade deficit only worse, while hurting the poorest economies the most and penalizing global prospects.
According to the new IMF outlook, global growth is forecast at 3.0% for 2019. That’s the lowest since the global crisis of 2008-9. The decline is largely due to the US tariff wars, which have contributed to the projected slowdown in the US and China.
Due to the global slowdown, world growth prospects now hover at levels where they were last amid the darkest moments of 2008/9.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
What Has Freaked Out The US Fed? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
The US Fed cut rates again by 25 basis points, the third time this year. Prior to the start of 2019, the US Fed gave guidance that 3 to 4 more rate increases were planned for 2019. What the heck happened to the US Fed and what has them so freaked out that they completely changed direction on their expectations for the US and Global economy so quickly? Source: Yahoo Finance
It is painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that the US Fed expected the many years of near-zero interest rates between 2009 and 2015 to act as a fuel for future growth. The problem was that no real growth materialized until just before the 2016 US Presidential elections – and even that was relatively muted. The US Dollar had continued to rally from July 2011 lows well into the 2016 election date. The expectations for the US economy hinged on who won the election. After President Trump won, the markets started an immediate rally expecting business-friendly policies and government.
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Thursday, October 31, 2019
Stock Market Long-Term Predictive Software Suggests Volatility May Surge / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
Over the past few weeks and months, a number of key economic data has continued to rally the US major indexes towards new highs, hopes of a US/China trade deal, a continued shift of capital in the US markets for protection and safety, and moderately strong US economic indicators and an earning season that appears to be moderately strong for Q3 of 2019. The interesting facet of this move higher is that it is happening while trading volume has diminished dramatically in the SPY. The futures contracts, the ES, YM, and NQ, continue to show relatively strong volume activity though.
Additionally, the overnight Repo markets have risen to the attention of many skilled analysts. The concern is that the continued US Fed support of the overnight Repo facility may be a band-aid attempt to support a gaping credit crisis that is brewing just outside of view. We’ve been doing quite a bit of research over the past few weeks regarding this Repo market support by the US Fed and we believe there is more to it than many believe. We believe certain institutional banking firms may be at extreme risks related to derivative investments, shadow banking activities and/or global commodity/stock/currency/asset risk exposure. The only answer we have for the extended Repo facility at increasing levels is that the institutional banking system is starting to “fray around the edges”. Thus, we believe some larger credit risk problems may be just around the corner.
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Thursday, October 31, 2019
Gold Juniors Decline While Senior Miners Rally – What Gives? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
Do you know what mining companies did yesterday? They verified a major breakdown, confirming the extremely bearish outlook for the following months. What? The miners rallied? Oh, you mean the senior mining stocks (HUI, GDX…) – then yes, they moved a bit higher. But the junior miners (Toronto Stock Exchange Venture Index) just declined after confirming breakdown below the very important rising support line, which has profound implications for the next months. Truth be told, what’s happening in the senior miners can be used to indicate the next short-term moves as well, but we’ll start today’s analysis with the big picture.
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Thursday, October 31, 2019
Kids Scary Pumpkin Carving Halloween 2019 - How to Carve Pumpkins / Personal_Finance / Money Saving
Trick or treat! The kids got crafty and put their pumpkin carving skills to the test! Let us know what you think!
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Thursday, October 31, 2019
Silver’s Three Legged Bull-Run Stool / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
A case can be made that silver's current price “stability” – believed by many to be well below where it "should" be – is the result of at least three interlocking factors.
There are certainly other considerations, but the following seem especially relevant today…
Our chosen metaphor is the three-legged stool. Take one leg away, and the stool topples. In the case of silver, the outcome is likely to be a violent price rise of epic proportions.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
BEA Reports US Economy Grew by 1.93% GDP Q3 2019 / Economics / US Economy
In their first (preliminary) estimate of the US GDP for the third quarter of 2019, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the US economy was growing at a +1.93% annual rate, down -0.08 percentage points (pp) from the prior quarter.
The minor change in the headline masked a material weakening in the growth of consumer spending. The growth rate for aggregate consumer spending on goods and services was reported to be over 1% lower (-1.10pp) than in the prior quarter. The growth of governmental spending (Federal, state and local) also weakened by about half of that amount. But largely offsetting those negative impacts on the headline number were soaring inventories and exports.
Annualized household disposable income was reported to be $253 higher than in the prior quarter, and the household savings rate was reported to be 8.1%, up 0.1pp from the prior quarter.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Gold Price Trend Forecast 2019 Current State / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
The gold bull run of 2019 peaked early September at $1566, up over 25% on the year! Which will likely have encouraged many prominent gold bugs to get carried away with various headlines of Gold heading for $5000, $10,000 and beyond. However, since it's peak the Gold price has been drifting lower at a shallow pace to it's last closing price of $1491, still up over 19% on the year. So is this a correction in a bull market or marks the end of Gold's bull run for 2019?
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Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Why Americans Will Begin Regretting Buying That New Home / Housing-Market / US Housing
There’s one thing that is always true: Most people are not good investors. They buy the most near a long-term top and they sell the most near the bottoms that follow.We have lived in a rare period since World War II wherein housing was first boosted by the first middle class generation (The Bob Hope) who could more broadly afford homes and mortgages, and then by the unprecedented and massive Baby Boom generation’s demand.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Is Gold The Secret Diversifier? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
It’s no secret to you that I am still more bearish on gold than bullish. And it’s no secret to me that a lot of our subscribers still like gold and feel that it is still a safe haven and a good store of value long term.Despite having argued that gold was one of the largest bubbles and a part of the larger 30-Year Commodity Cycle bubble and crash, I’ve also noted that both it and Bitcoin have weathered the crash much better than other commodities. And by the way, it has been the commodity sector that thus far has proven my view that bubbles don’t have soft landings when they finally burst .
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Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Impeachments & Healthcare / Politics / US Politics
Many Democrats really want to impeach President Trump. According to a Pew Research poll conducted after the latest round of Democratic debates, 40% of Democratic respondents said that beating Donald Trump was the number one issue in the upcoming election. It’s not domestic policies, not foreign policy, not protecting any class of people, but simply making sure that, come January 2021, his name is not on the White House door.Obviously, this goes far beyond wanting one’s political party to win. I’m not going to list out reasons why. We’re all well-versed in the current political battles. But focusing on removing him from office either before or during the election leaves precious little time to discuss national issues.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Why Nobody Chants “End the Fed” Anymore / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
Americans hated it when the Federal Reserve handed trillions of dollars to crooked Wall Street banks following the 2008 Financial Crisis. Politicians were confronted about the merits of central banking and bailouts.
For the first time in history, college students were chanting “End the Fed” at campaign rallies as Ron Paul took the central bank to task during his presidential campaigns.
Virtually everyone in America vehemently opposed the central bank handing piles of cash to the same bankers whose greed and fraud had caused the Financial Crisis.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
2 %: A Magic Number or an Obsession? / Economics / Inflation
Arf Badeckandy writes: Inflation Targeting (IT) was first adopted in New Zealand in 1990 with a primary goal of price stability. They were going through years of high inflation and slow growth. Initially, they set a target of between 0 to 2 percent. In 1991, the Inflation rate was down to 2.60% from 6.10%. Although there is a cost of disinflation and the Real GDP fell, it recovered. As of August 2019, there are about 71 Central Banks which has adopted an IT Monetary Policy. It can be seen that the authorities are most likely to adopt this policy when their inflation rate is high – to bring it down. Argentina adopted IT in 2016 while the inflation rate was 35.5%, Uganda in 2011 with an inflation rate between 16%-17 %.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Silver Price Daily Reversals Powerful Lessons / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
Friday’s session was exceptional for several reasons and the most profound ones are gold’s and silver’s sizable intraday rally, and the subsequent slide. The reversals that both metals created are practically screaming signs pointing to what’s next. The way mining stocks behaved, and how gold closed relative to its previous tops also have important implications, but let’s start today’s analysis with the former.
Silver, the less valuable (at least so far) of the most popular precious metals and many small investors’ metal of choice, reversed in a particularly meaningful way.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Interference Most Foul: When Speculation Becomes Reality / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2019
Sector expert Michael Ballanger ruminates on the bubble-popping influence of government and the banking sector on cryptocurrencies, and offers a brief rundown on his most current holdings.
To put it mildly, the business of financial forecasting is not only an inexact science, it is a magnified case study in handicapping, the likes of which you find in sports betting such as horse racing or basketball. You take a basket of data inputs, such as the last five heats run by a certain filly or the accuracy of a basketball player shooting free throws and you assign various weights to the data, which allows you to determine whether the horse or the player has the ability to shine.
In financial forecasting, you take a similar basket of inputs, such as 10-year Treasury yields and average dividend yields, plus a barrage of other factors, which allows you to gauge direction and amplitude. In sports, you are handicapping a winner, and by how much, while in financial forecasting you are handicapping the direction and by how much.
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