Monday, May 27, 2019
US Memorial Day Weekend Market Analysis / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2019
By: Chris_Vermeulen
The US Memorial Day weekend is set up to become a very interesting time for investors. The EU voting is complete and the change in EU leadership may move the markets a bit. China appears to be playing a waiting game – attempting to hold the US/Trump at bay until after the 2020 US elections. This week is certain to be very interesting for traders/investors.
The European stocks moved higher in trading on Monday as the relief from the EU election event and support for auto shares pushed the markets higher. The transition in the EU over the next few months will solidify into a political and social agenda. The EU leadership must acknowledge these future objectives of all parties in order to maintain some level of calm. It is evident that many EU nations are relatively satisfied with the current leadership while others are transitioning into more centrist leadership. The next 4+ years will be full of further transition in the EU.
China is another global issue that is relatively unsettled. We’ve been doing some research with regards to China and the potential future political and economic pathways that may become evident in the near-term future. Our biggest concern is that China has been inflating their economic levels for decades and the true scope of the Chinese economy may be much weaker than everyone expects. If our suspicions are correct and China has been inflating economic levels for many years, then the transition to a consumer/services-driven economy may be dramatically over-inflated and the US/China trade issues could be biting much harder than the Chinese want to admit.
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Monday, May 27, 2019
Things That Make the Best Stock Trading Apps Really Worth Your Time! / Personal_Finance / Mobile Technology
By: Submissions
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Monday, May 27, 2019
The End of Risk-Free Retirement / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: John_Mauldin
In the last 150 years, we’ve had a number of innovations that radically changed the way we live.
You can tick off the list: electricity, the automobile, refrigeration, TV, the Internet. But one innovation rarely makes those lists. It is just as significant if not more so…
Retirement.
The idea that people can stop working in their fifties or sixties and then enjoy 20+ years of relative leisure is actually quite new.
For most of human history, most people worked as long as they were physically able to and died soon after.
Monday, May 27, 2019
Is the Stock Market Making a Long Term Top? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Troy_Bombardia
The stock market has been choppy over the past 3 weeks, with trade-related sectors and markets much worse-off than the overall U.S. stock market. From a longer term perspective, the U.S. stock market has gone nowhere since 2018. This begs the question “is the market making a long term top??
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Monday, May 27, 2019
War and Young Americans / Politics / US Military
By: Raul_I_Meijer
So we’re going to do this all over again? Well, not if I can help it. Not that I have much hope that I can, mind you. As the bastions of war chime on, my voice, like so many others, will be drowned out. The military industrial complex knows how to do propaganda, better than anyone. But I’ll try.
Vietnam gave the US its biggest ever defeat, both militarily and morally, and yet mere years after its deeply humiliating withdrawal was put into action, the country was back at sending its promising young boys and girls not to its school systems, but to far away battle fields to be crippled, traumatized and slaughtered.
I know, I know, the UK and France do that too, but few other places do. Russia today uses its troops to defend its territory, China has yet to reveal its intentions. But the intentions of the US have been known ever since WWII ended.
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Monday, May 27, 2019
Stock Market Rally Over – Downtrend Resumes / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Andre_Gratian
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend – Final long-term phase on the way? How much longer, is the question.
Intermediate trend – The anticipated intermediate-term correction has started. Can’t tell yet if it’s a C-wave or something less.
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, May 27, 2019
Stock Market Crash Warning - The Trap Door Has Opened / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Avi_Gilburt
I love reading about all the good news in the market. This past week, we saw U.S. jobless claims dip to 211,000, and they are now near half-century lows. We also saw U.S. consumer sentiment reach a 15-year high. So, what could go wrong?
Well, as Professor Hernan Cortes Douglas, former Luksic Scholar at Harvard University, former Deputy Research Administrator at the World Bank, and former Senior Economist at the IMF, noted:
. . . financial markets never collapse when things look bad. In fact, quite the contrary is true. Before contractions begin, macroeconomic flows always look fine. That is why the vast majority of economists always proclaim the economy to be in excellent health just before it swoons.
Moreover, the fact that consumer sentiment is hitting major highs is often a warning to the financial markets.
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Monday, May 27, 2019
How to Choose a Good Online Estate Agent / Housing-Market / UK Housing
By: Sumeet_Manhas
Traditional high street estate agents still control around 95% of the market, but in recent years a newer type of intermediary, the online estate agent, has gained a significant foothold in the sector. Using an ever-expanding range of technological options, a reliable online agency can now offer a similar level of service to their high street equivalents. And because an online operator has substantially lower overheads, homeowners are usually charged a fixed fee which may be just a fraction of the price charged by a bricks-and-mortar estate agent.
Monday, May 27, 2019
Bitcoin Price Stalls Near $8100 / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Chris_Vermeulen
After an incredible 7+week rally in Bitcoin, from $3700 to above $8000, the current price action is setting up for what may become an extended Pennant/Flag formation with quite a bit of sideways trading ahead.
Our researchers believe the past 7+ weeks rally in Bitcoin was prompted by a shift away from risk in Asia/China and into more suitable protection assets. Cryptos appear to be the easy choice for many as this rally coincided with the April 3rd through 6th US/China trade talks in Washington, DC (https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3004961/us-says-theres-still-significant-work-be-done-trade-talks). It appears that many investors were preparing for a difficult deadline after the March 1st deadline for a deal was pushed back. These early April trade talks may have been interpreted as a “do or die” effort from both sides. Again, shortly after the May 1st US/China trade talks in Beijing, Bitcoin began another rally from the $5200 level all the way up to the $8000 level.
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Monday, May 27, 2019
UK EU Election Results, Brexit Party Victory, Labour and Tory Bloodbath, UKIP and ChangeUK Die / ElectionOracle / BrExit
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Britain's ruling establishment has been delivered another bloody nose, even worse than the mainstream establishment press had been expecting that the REMAIN parties would do far better than the LEAVE parties with Brexit party typically expected to win about 24 seats i.e. similar to that of UKIP total in 2014.
However, this is set against my long standing forecast of 10th May with expectations that the Brexit Party would win at least 30 seats with the most probable number being 32 seats as my following video illustrates:
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Sunday, May 26, 2019
The Three M's of Hyperinflation : Milosevic, Mugabe, And Maduro / Economics / HyperInflation
By: Steve_H_Hanke
What do Slobodan Milosevic, Robert Mugabe, and Nicolás Maduro have in common? Other than being leaders who kept the Communist Manifesto at their bedside, all three ushered in devastating hyperinflations.
Hyperinflations are rare. They have only occurred when the supply of money has been governed by discretionary paper money standards. No hyperinflation has ever been recorded when money has been commodity-based or when paper money has been convertible into a commodity.
The first hyperinflation occurred during the French Revolution (1789-96) when the mandat collapsed and the monthly inflation rate peaked at 143% in December of 1795. More than a century elapsed before another episode of hyperinflation occurred. Not coincidentally, this period of currency tranquility occurred during the heyday of the gold standard. With the emergence and adoption of fiat currencies, the 20th century ushered in currency instability and inflation. Indeed, since 1900 there have been 57 episodes of hyperinflation. And, five of those episodes can be claimed by Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela. All are featured in the Hanke-Krus World Hyperinflation Table below, which first appeared in The Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History (2013).
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Sunday, May 26, 2019
Global Multi-Market / Asset Charts Review / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2019
By: Gary_Tanashian
First off, a wish to all readers for a happy Memorial Day weekend as we remember loved ones lost in battle and otherwise. Memorial is not a US thing, it’s an everybody thing.
Today we take a look at various markets and assets using daily charts of the associated ETFs.
The real work in determining the state of the markets going forward will be done by evaluating internals measures like sector leadership (e.g. our SOX>NDX>SPX leadership chain), inter-market and inter-asset ratios (e.g. our ongoing gold ratios analysis), macro indicators (e.g. the recent notable drop in inflation expectations) and a whole host of other hidden markers to be tracked and updated (NFTRH is constantly on that job looking forward to the potentials, as opposed to in review or in rear-view). Also, let’s not forget sentiment analysis, which led us to the current correction. It will also come into play going both ways in the weeks and months ahead.
But sometimes it’s fun to just check out the charts and see what we see.
Beginning right here in the US with the broad market, SPY is in a small potential Head & Shoulders pattern, with an alternate left shoulder should it turn out to be what self-important TAs like to call a “complex H&S”. That would create a larger H&S scenario with a lower target, which we’ll reserve for NFTRH if the time comes to activate this still unconfirmed H&S. The dashed neckline is shown for the little guy and should the big one come into play the black SMA 200 could act as a neckline there.
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Sunday, May 26, 2019
An Oil Shock Could Be the Black Swan That Finally Drives Gold Higher / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: MoneyMetals
Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.
Coming up the top trends forecaster Gerald Celente of the Trends Journal joins me to discuss a myriad of topics. Gerald gives us more insight on why the precious metals are struggling, why he recently changed his economic forecast and also shares why he believes a continuation of the rising tensions in both Venezuela and the Middle East could lead to a spike in oil prices that the world simply cannot afford. Don’t miss another wonderful interview with the great Gerald Celente, coming up after this week’s market update.
As global stock and commodity markets gyrate, gold and silver markets are gaining some safe haven strength.
Gold prices moved back into positive territory on Thursday but is little changed for week now. The yellow metal is up a slight 0.4% since last Friday’s close to trade at $1,284 per ounce.
Silver has been beaten down this spring but is at least showing some signs of life here during the later part of the week, or at the very least has appeared to stabilize a bit. The white metal is now up a 0.9% for the week to bring spot prices to $14.61 an ounce.
Turning to the platinum group metals, platinum registers a weekly loss of 2.2% to trade at $805. And finally, palladium shows a 0.7% decline to come in at $1,332 per ounce as of this Friday morning recording.
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Sunday, May 26, 2019
Crude Oil Bulls, Are You Serious About Arresting the Slide? / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Nadia_Simmons
We have said the bulls had a bad day on Wednesday. How would you rate their yesterday’s performance? Heck, they are not having a good day today either. Black gold is heading for the biggest weekly loss in 2019. Has the support fallen out from below? Where can we expect the decline to stop?
Let’s take a closer look at the chart below (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).
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Sunday, May 26, 2019
Brexit Party Forces Theresa May to Resign, Boris Johnson Next Tory Prime Minister? / Politics / UK Politics
By: N_Walayat
When the European election results are announced Sunday, Nigel Farage's Brexit party looks set to win as many as 30 of the 73 seats whilst the Tory party under Theresa May are set to suffer an electoral bloodbath by winning as few as 6 seats, which would be harbinger for a disastrous outcome at the next General Election. Thus the Tory party had little choice in finally forcing an inept and crippled Prime Minister Theresa May to resign Friday, ending what amounts to a miserable 3 years that not only failed to achieve Brexit but that the past 3 years had failed to achieve anything of substance as contrary to some of the mainstream press commentary Theresa May was NO Margaret Thatcher, not coming anywhere close, who instead is probably the worst British Prime Minister in living memory.
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Saturday, May 25, 2019
IBM - Investing in AI Machine Intelligence Stocks / Companies / AI
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Where to invest to profit from the exponential machine intelligence mega-trend. I have ranked these stocks in in terms of risk vs reward and volatility. Do remember that when investing in the stock market that your capital is at risk. There are NO SURE BETS!
If you've not already done so then watch my following video from November 2016 which illustrates why everything will start to change exponentially by 2022.
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Saturday, May 25, 2019
Seasonal Dysfunction: Why Generations of Gold and Silver Investors Are Having Such Difficulty / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: The_Gold_Report
Sector expert Michael Ballanger discusses the demotivating effects of current market trends. With great apology, I am late with this week's missive largely due to the arrival of boating season and the fierce need to secure a new vehicle, which should have taken (only) two days but didn't. Having arrived at the marina on Friday evening, I expected a rather smooth transition as it was the first year in four that I asked our local service fellow to do all of the end-of-year maintenance, instead of me draining the lines and winterizing the water tank and changing the engine oil and all of those things I loved to do in my 40s but that have become a royal pain in the ass twenty years later. Call it "geezer-itus" or "baby-boomer angst," I agreed to let the local marina service group do all those debilitating tasks and simply threw them the keys while shouting "See ya next spring!"
I fully expecting a boat functioning this past weekend in exactly the condition in which it was functioning last October. Well, with great deference to Mr. Murphy and that obnoxious law named after him, my lovely little Freshwater Pearl was a mess of the highest and most irritating order, floors most foul, upholstery seams ripped, and obvious dings and dots from the reentry-to-the-water exercise. However, what really set me off was that my most-excellent winch-powered dinghy caddy was nonfunctional, and after five hours with limited workspace, I removed what I thought was the faulty part.
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Saturday, May 25, 2019
Employment - The Good and the Bad of Job Automation / Economics / Employment
By: Patrick_Watson
People are worried robots will take their jobs. That’s a legitimate fear sometimes, but it’s not new. It is just another step in a process that started long ago.
The bigger question is whether job automation is good.
If we want the economy to grow, the math is pretty easy. It’s a two-factor equation:
- The number of available workers, multiplied by
- The value of goods and services the average worker produces.
Increase one or both of those and presto, GDP will rise. Automation helps raise the second one. But then it gets complicated.
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Saturday, May 25, 2019
Gold Mining Mid-Tier Stocks Fundamentals / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2019
By: Zeal_LLC
The mid-tier gold miners’ stocks in the sweet spot for price-appreciation potential have been struggling in recent months, grinding lower with gold. Their strong early-year momentum has been sapped by recent stock-market euphoria. But gold-mining stocks are more important than ever for prudently diversifying portfolios. The mid-tiers’ recently-reported Q1’19 results reveal their fundamentals remain sound and bullish.
The wild market action in Q4’18 emphasized why investors shouldn’t overlook gold stocks. All portfolios need a 10% allocation in gold and its miners’ stocks! As the flagship S&P 500 broad-market stock index plunged 9.2% in December alone, nearly entering a new bear market, the leading mid-tier gold-stock ETF surged 13.7% higher that month. That was a warning shot across the bow that these markets are changing.
Four times a year publicly-traded companies release treasure troves of valuable information in the form of quarterly reports. Required by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, these 10-Qs and 10-Ks contain the best fundamental data available to traders. They dispel all the sentiment distortions inevitably surrounding prevailing stock-price levels, revealing corporations’ underlying hard fundamental realities.
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Saturday, May 25, 2019
Buy This Pick-and-Shovel 5G Stock Before It Takes Off / Companies / Mobile Technology
By: Robert_Ross
Wireless technology has come a long way.
The first generation of wireless known as 1G was rolled out in the 1980s. The only thing a user could do with 1G was make a phone call.
At times, the call quality could rival that of two tin cans connected by a string.
But wireless tech has made huge advances since those early days.
About every 10 years we’ve seen a new generation of wireless—1G, 2G, 3G, and today’s 4G. Each was faster and more reliable than the previous generation.