Monday, April 29, 2019
The World's Saddest And Happiest Countries - Hanke's Annual Misery Index 2018 / Politics / Social Issues
By: Steve_H_Hanke
The human condition inhabits a vast continuum between "miserable" and "happy." In the sphere of economics, misery tends to flow from high inflation, steep borrowing costs and unemployment. The most surefire way to mitigate that misery is economic growth. All else equal, happiness tends to blossom when growth is strong, inflation and interest rates are low, and jobs are plentiful.
Many countries measure and report these economic metrics on a regular basis. Comparing them, nation by nation, can tell us a lot about where in the world people are sad or happy.
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Sunday, April 28, 2019
UK Demographics Crisis Silver Lining of Sorts / Housing-Market / Demographics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
This analysis directly continues on from (Britain's Demographic Time Bomb Has Gone Off!) which is part of a series that aims to conclude in a new multi-year trend forecast for UK house prices. But first a recap of my analysis to date that so far suggests to ignore mainstream press hysteria that warns of impending doom for Britains housing market, encouraged no less than the Government and Bank of England which warn to expect a 30% CRASH in UK house prices should the UK LEAVE the EU without a deal.
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Sunday, April 28, 2019
Joe Biden Works for Donald Trump / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Joe Biden is working for Donald Trump, right? I haven’t heard either of them say it outright, but it’s the only reason I can see that would explain why Biden is running for president. And if Biden works for Trump, that means he works for Putin, because Trump is Putin’s puppet, no matter how often Robert Mueller denies it.
Then again, if we would suggest, purely hypothetically and for entertainment purposes only, that Biden is neither Putin’s nor Trump’s puppet, what on earth drives him to declare his candidacy as the oldest ever presidential candidate in US history? Biden will be Trump’s punching bag. There is so much wrong with and about the man, Trump’s not even laughing, just saying: “oh yes, please, bring it.”
Biden has the Anita Hill boondoggle to his name, there’s a huge nascent story concerning Ukraine, where he interfered, while vice-president, to benefit his son, and there are tons of women who will come with groping tales. This will be a very long list, as long as his career in Washington. Biden bumbles and stumbles for a living. Someone’s going to write a book about that someday.
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Sunday, April 28, 2019
Gold and Silver End of Week Technical, CoT and Fundamental Status / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Gary_Tanashian
After an interesting week and to allow more focus on charting the miners this weekend, we again offload much of the NFTRH Precious Metals segment’s content to the public site. The following is (hopefully) going to be long on charts and relatively short on words (sighs of relief palpable…).
HUI/Gold Ratio is intact to its higher lows from September. This was a logical bounce point for gold stocks. HGR needs to promptly take back the SMA 200, however.
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Sunday, April 28, 2019
E-commerce Trends to Expect in 2019 / Companies / Retail Sector
By: Submissions
The online shopping industry is changing. Last year, mobile purchases increased by 55% and are projected to account for $175bn purchases by 2022. Customer expectations are now bigger, with as many as 4 in 10 online buyers expecting retailers to offer same-day shipping services.
If you regularly shop online, some of the changes coming to e-commerce will be highly beneficial to you. Below are some of these trends you should expect.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Ready to 4/20 Your Stocks Portfolio? / Companies / Investing 2019
By: EWI
Dear Investor,
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Starting Monday, April 29, join other investors for a 5-day online video event -- and see 15+ hot pot-stock picks Elliott wave guys identified using their unique method.
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Sunday, April 28, 2019
UK Caravan Park Holidays 2019 Review - Hoseasons Cayton Bay North East England / Personal_Finance / Holidays
By: Anika_Walayat
Thinking of booking a caravan park holiday for summer 2019? Then look no further than our series of videos of what it's like to holiday at a UK caravan park. This is at the Hoseasons Caravan Park at Cayton Bay, North East England, not 10 miles from Scarborough. We cover everything from checking in to use of the various facilities as well as nearby attractions.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Stock Market Dow Trend Forecast - April Update / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Yield curve inversion panic, brexit panic, US economy in a downwards death spiral, bear market this that and the other. The mainstream media's doom and gloom expectations of a recession these past few weeks to resolve in an bear market has instead had stocks clambering towards achieving new all time highs! Though many bears technically or rather delusionally continue to cling onto stocks being in a bear market until they break to new all time highs.
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Saturday, April 27, 2019
Fed Pause Fuels New S&P Highs… Is It Real? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: MoneyMetals
I’m Mike Gleason and welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast.
A few weeks ago we heard the first half of an interview Money Metals president Stefan Gleason did during a recent 360 Gold Summit. Today we’ll hear part two of that interview. Stefan gives some important warnings to precious metals investors, discusses why he favors one of the precious metals over the others and also talks about some really important things to consider when selecting a precious metals dealer. Don’t miss the eye-opening conclusion of Stefan’s interview, coming up after this week’s market update.
Well, the big headline in markets this week – the S&P 500 pushed to a new all-time high in nominal terms.
But is it a new high in real terms? Most in the financial media don’t want to ask that question. They would rather join their Wall Street sponsors in celebrating a new official record.
President Donald Trump certainly didn’t miss the opportunity to boast about the stock market’s strength under his watch.
Read full article... Read full article...Donald Trump: The stock market and our country from an economic standpoint is doing the best probably it's ever done. We're hitting new highs again. We've hit new highs, I guess, close to or over 100 times since I'm president from the time of the election.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
At Look at IPOs in Digital Advertising / Companies / IPOs
By: Rodney_Johnson
Digital advertising is supposed to be the fuel of the future, funding new companies (#IPOs) that provide us with services we never knew we wanted – Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. – while tearing away at our privacy.But there’s a problem.
Digital advertising is annoying users, and starting to creep us out.
I don’t want to see ads for lightweight jackets for the next three months just because I searched for one last November.
And by the way, isn’t that a bit backward? If I already bought the jacket, why is it still being marketed to me?
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Saturday, April 27, 2019
How to Make Money on Your House / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Rodney_Johnson
My house is in a bit of disarray. We’re spring cleaning, but it’s more than that. We’ve decided to move, so going through clutter takes on new meaning.We don’t need to move, but as I wrote a few weeks ago, we’re looking to the future and trying to determine how best to position ourselves. Two hundred feet from open water in one of the more expensive homes in the neighborhood looks less attractive when I consider rising taxes and higher flood insurance. As many of you commented, it might be time.
But now I’m a bit anxious. Other high-end homes in my neighborhood aren’t moving. After making a tentative decision to sell, I have that nagging worry that I won’t be able to get the price I want.
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Saturday, April 27, 2019
Dangers in the US Real Estate Market / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Harry_Dent
There’s been a lot in the news lately about a slowing U.S. property market, with San Francisco a particular worry. According to Reuters, home sales fell more than expected last month. The National Association of Realtors said that existing home sales dropped 4.9%.
I’m, in fact, in Australia for the next two weeks – my third visit in 14 months – because real estate prices are cratering. Everyone seems shocked. I’ve been warning of this for a long time now.
While scanning headlines at 2 a.m. local time (4 p.m. Eastern – jet lag’s a *****), I saw several articles about trouble brewing in the San Francisco real estate market. Again, not surprised.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Near-Record Gold Shorting / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Zeal_LLC
Gold has failed to gain traction over the past couple months, normally a seasonally-strong time. That has really weighed on sentiment, leaving traders increasingly bearish. Gold investment demand has flagged dramatically with lofty stock markets spewing great euphoria. That’s given gold-futures speculators the run of the market, where they have sold aggressively including extreme shorting. But that’s actually very bullish.
Gold price action is driven by the collective trading of both investors and speculators. The former control vast amounts of capital, which dominates gold prices when it is migrating in or out. But investors’ interest in gold withers when stock markets are super-high. When stocks seemingly do nothing but rally, there’s no perceived need to prudently diversify stock-heavy portfolios with counter-moving gold. It falls out of favor.
Extreme stock-market euphoria is gold’s primary problem now, acting like kryptonite for gold investment. This week the flagship US S&P 500 broad-market stock index clawed back to a new all-time record high. That extended its monster rebound rally since late December’s near-bear lows to 24.8%! The farther the stock markets advance, the more gold is forgotten. Investors have relentlessly pulled capital back out of gold.
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Friday, April 26, 2019
The US Economy Is Reaching a Dead End / Economics / Recession 2020
By: John_Mauldin
Sooner or later, the US will enter a recession. My best guess is it will happen sometime in 2020. I may be off (early) by a year or two, but it’s coming.We know two things will happen.
- Tax revenues will fall as people’s income drops.
- Federal spending will rise as safety-net entitlement claims go up.
The result will be higher deficits.
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Friday, April 26, 2019
Will Fed’s New Balance Sheet Policy be a Reason to Buy Gold? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
As always, most analysts focus not on what they really should. After March FOMC meeting, everyone was talking about the more dovish dot-plot. But the Fed also announced that it will end the unwinding of its balance sheet in September. As these changes are revolutionary and may entail potentially huge consequences for the precious markets, we invite you to read our today’s article about the new Fed’s balance sheet policy and find out whether it will be positive for the gold prices.
Most analysts focus on the recent revision of the Fed’s dot-plot. This is of course very important – so we have analyzed them in the previous part of the April edition of the Market Overview – but we should not forget about very substantial changes in the US central bank’s balance sheet policy. We have described these modifications in the March 21 edition of the Gold News Monitor, but let’s now dig into the new Fed’s normalization plan.
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Friday, April 26, 2019
Are Stock Market’s Internals Sending Bearish Warnings? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Troy_Bombardia
With the stock market at all-time highs, many market pundits have noted that relatively few stocks are making new highs. In their minds, this supports the bearish narrative that “relatively few stocks are holding this stock market rally together, and sooner or later the house of cards will come tumbling down”.
Go here to understand our fundamentals-driven long term outlook.
Let’s determine the stock market’s most probable medium term direction by objectively quantifying technical analysis. For reference, here’s the random probability of the U.S. stock market going up on any given day.
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Friday, April 26, 2019
Financial Stocks Setting Up An Island Top Formation / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Chris_Vermeulen
As we continue to scan the charts for setups and trigger to alert our followers, we’ve come across a setup that may be more ominous than what it appears. Recently we’ve posted articles about how the SPY and the NQ have pushed into new all-time high price territory and how Gold is setting up for a momentum base that should launch precious metals to near highs. We’ve also discussed how we believe the current upside price bias in the US stock markets should last another 10~35+ days before new price weakness sets up – possibly pushing prices lower in late May or early June 2019.
Our research team has been scanning the charts looking for anything that could give us an edge to the potential setup for this price weakness in the future. We believe the Transportation Index and the Financials could be keys to understanding how far the upside rally can continue and when a price peak may begin to warn of a potential price top or rollover.
An Island Top is a pattern that sets up with an upside price gap followed by sideways price action above that gap. In theory, this type of setup should promote the gap to be filled with downside price action before any further upside price move can continue. Although, gaps to the upside are fairly common in strong uptrends. Given the strength of the earnings data released early this week and the expectations that we have for some continued upside price bias over the next 10~35+ days, we are watching these Island Top formation in the Financials for any signs of weakness to alert our followers.
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Friday, April 26, 2019
Precious Metals Are All At Support / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Avi_Gilburt
I am not sure how much more I can add to what has been said over the last two weeks in the metals complex.
At this point in time, it is quite clear that the metals are testing support. As specifically noted about silver, the 14.60 support region is what I want to see holding as support here. While I can accept a spike and reversal of that level, a sustained break of that level opens the door to a 13 handle for a lower low bottoming in that chart.
As far as GLD is, the 119 region is the similar support region I want to see hold for a wave iv. And, in GDX, you can see we are now approaching the bottom of our support box as well.
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Friday, April 26, 2019
8 Tips for Choosing Your First Investment Property / Housing-Market / Buy to Let
By: Steve_Barker
If you’re looking for your first investment property, you’ve no doubt familiarized yourself with trends in mortgage and interest rates and have decided that now is the time. The process may seem daunting, at first, but you’ll find it’s more manageable than you might think.In choosing your investment property, you’re choosing to invest in your dreams. With this in mind, here are a few tips to help you out.
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Friday, April 26, 2019
SPX Goldilocks Now, But She’ll Be Vanquished / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Gary_Tanashian
Just one look at the daily chart of SPX tells us – in hindsight – that this may have all been about gap acquisition. I was completely right and righteous to be bullish on the Christmas Eve massacre low, right on up to the 50 day moving average, which was the original target.
After that I was compelled by the market’s technicals to be bullish for a drive to the SMA 200, and then 2815 resistance, and then… a top-test. I not only felt not righteous with these compulsions, I felt a little soiled. Hey, it’s just a human (as opposed to a newsletter writer/market commentator) talking about human feelings.
There is a difference between being contrary and willingly bullish and being compelled to be bullish. I don’t like the feeling of that second thing very much. Anyway, there is a gap and do you know what? Last summer’s rally filled a similar gap (not shown here) from late January 2018, proceeded upward into a nice bull trap, and then October happened. FYI. The bears were disoriented and thus pissed all last summer. But any self respecting bull trap would by definition piss the bears off because it’s the same psychology that traps the bulls, only in reverse.
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