Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Fresh Fight For Best Five-year Fixed Rate Savings Account Deals / Personal_Finance / Savings Accounts
Savers may be pleased to hear that rates are improving on five-year fixed rate bonds. Furthermore, it may not necessarily be down to the Bank of England increasing the base rate for the first time in 10 years. In fact, the average five-year fixed bond rate rests at 1.98% today, which is 0.24% higher than it was a year ago.
Remarkably, providers have not had to work too hard to attract customers, as the smallest of tweaks have resulted in propelling them to higher positions in the Best Buy tables. Indeed, since the start of February, several changes in the market have resulted in market-leading deals.
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Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Crude Oil Price Trend Forecast for March 2018 / Commodities / Crude Oil
The crude oil price started 2018 with a BANG, rising from an opening $60 to a January peak of $67, that's a 12% gain in less than 1 month!
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Tuesday, February 27, 2018
US Goldilocks Economy is DEAD! / Economics / US Economy
“Once you strip out the effects of the debt binge, the artificial stimulus via currency depreciation, and the fabled ‘wealth effect’ from the equity market runup, real GDP growth stripped-down to its core was the grand total of 0.7% last year. Potemkin would be proud.” – David Rosenberg
appears every president finds the religion of false economic narrative once they ascend to power. Trump never stops babbling and tweeting about the fantastic economy and raging jobs market since his election. He has embraced the stock market bubble as proof of his brilliant leadership, rather than the tens of trillions in debt propping up the most overvalued market in world history. Every president takes credit for any good news, spins bad news as good news, or blames the previous president for bad news that can’t be denied. The president has absolutely zero impact on the economy or stock market over the short term. It’s like taking credit for the sun rising in the east each morning.
The Big Lie method works wonders when you have a willfully ignorant, mathematically challenged, easily manipulated populace. I spent the entire Obama presidency obliterating the fake economic data perpetuated by his BLS, BEA and every other government agency trying to paint a rosy economic picture. I voted for Trump because the thought of Crooked Hillary as the president made me ill. Despite disagreeing with many of his economic, budgetary, and military policies during his first year in office, I’d vote for him again over Hillary in an instant. The thought of having that evil shrew running the country gives me chills.
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Tuesday, February 27, 2018
US Stock Market in Position for Downwave #2 / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Technical analyst Clive Maund explains why he believes the stock market rally of the past couple of weeks is not a resumption of the bull market.
This is a very timely point to remind ourselves that when the market broke down and plunged a few weeks ago, it did so from a parabolic blowoff top, or as we had defined it, a 4-arc Fan Ascent, which amounts to the same thing for practical purposes, a top that was accompanied by all oscillators and indicators being at record overbought extremes. While this top may not look all that extreme compared to something like Bitcoin, we should keep in mind that the broad US stock market is infinitely greater in magnitude than something like Bitcoin, and therefore vast amounts of capital are required to create any kind of parabolic blowoff. Given that there was a long lead in to this parabolic blowoff it means that the stock market is done—finished—and the bell has been rung on a new bear market.
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Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Things to Think About Before Mortgage Refinancing / Housing-Market / Mortgages
You have probably thought of the idea to refinance your mortgage in order to gain some benefits. Maybe you think it is a pretty good idea, but you first must know what exactly refinancing involves. Keep in mind that refinancing means applying for a loan from some loan intermediary like the Swedish company Sambla and going through the process from the start. It is like buying completely new house. Due to the many details and other things involved in the process, a good idea is to see a financial or mortgage advisor for advice. That way you will get a clear picture about interest rates and other important things.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
Bonds and Related Financial Market Indicators / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market
The following is an excerpt from this week’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 488. For NFTRH bonds are not just an asset class ‘throw-in’ but instead are a key indicator set to the entire modern macro. Insofar as it may be time to use them for portfolio balance (I am currently long SHV, SHY, IEI & IEF), so much the better. Many could not wait to buy bonds during US ZIRP global NIRP operations, but today they pay better interest and have a contrarian edge with the entire herd bracing for a bear market.
We claimed appropriately bearish on bonds on December 4th, so you know this is not perma-book talking when we go the other way as yields hit our targets.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
Probable Stock Market Pop-n-Drop / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Good Morning!
SPX futures are up enough to complete a fifth Wave of C. The 61.8% Fibonacci level and Intermediate-term resistance at 2754.93 are still key to this retracement, although the SPX may briefly go as high as 2763.59 in a pop-n-drop to clean out any short positions with stops. This market is being vicious to those who shorted late and making it difficult to keep their positons. It may be a good time to layer in any short positons you may wish to have.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
Stock Market Bull Trap? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
The rally into early Monday, February 26, 2018 is no surprise to me. The charts below were written over the weekend suggesting follow through buying into early Monday at or above SPX 2754 and then a sudden fast reversal down below the 2532 area.I’ve seen this e-wave pattern before following a wxy W Wave where Wave X sees an irregular topping pattern (coming out of a bull flag formation) catching the bulls by surprise and leading to huge down move.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
An Inflation Indicator to Watch, Part 2 / Economics / Inflation
“Inflation comes from too much money chasing too few goods.” –Many an economics professor
But does it really?
In Part 1 of this series, I said I would challenge popular beliefs about inflation, while at the same time proposing an alternative theory. I also promised that the theory leads to an inflation indicator with an excellent prediction record, and I’ll define the indicator in this article. Considering inflation determines bull and bear markets in both stocks and bonds, that’s my big pitch.
But first, here’s a recap.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
Digital Gold Provide the Benefits Of Physical Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
– Will digital gold provide the benefits of physical gold?
– Digital gold and crypto gold products claim to combine efficiencies of blockchain with value of gold
– They are yet to provide the same benefits or safety as owning physical gold
– National mints jumping in on the ‘sexy blockchain’ act
– BOE declares bitcoin ‘not a currency;’ Royal Mint launches blockchain gold product
– Digital gold, blockchain gold and crypto gold is frequently not fully backed, unallocated, pooled and unsecured gold holdings
Monday, February 26, 2018
Here Is The Most Ridiculous Commentary About The Stock Market / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Whenever I write a new article on the stock market, I usually try to highlight just how ridiculous much of the commentary about the market truly is. My ultimate goal is to force you to think on your own and adopt a more intellectually honest perspective of financial markets, rather than just buying into anything you read or hear.
Two weeks ago, I noted how the pundits claimed the market dropped because of rising rates, but when the market rallied, the same pundits claimed that it was rallying because of rising rates.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
Stocks Break Higher but Their Rally May Fade / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Stocks rallied on Friday, but they remained within their week-long consolidation. Which direction is next? Will bulls drive prices higher this week? Or will Friday's move up fade today? The S&P 500 index continues to trade along the level of 2,700-2,750, and it is still around 4.4% below its late January all-time high. Stocks are expected to open higher today, but will they continue upwards after 9:30 a.m.?
The main U.S. stock market indexes went 1.4-1.8% higher in Friday's trading session, as investors' sentiment improved following week-long fluctuations after previous week's rally off February 9 lows. The S&P 500 index got close to its recent local highs and it currently trades around 4.4% below January 26 record high of 2,872.87. It retraced more than 61.8% of its late January - early February sell-off (retracement level at 2,742.92). The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.4%, and the technology Nasdaq Composite gained 1.8% on Friday.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
The No.1 Blockchain Stock Of 2018 / Companies / BlockChain
Last year, crypto-currencies burst on to the scene.
Bitcoin saw incredible gains in 2017, rising from $1,000 all the way to $19,000 in mid-December.
But regular investors have so far missed out on the cryptocurrency craze, as not only is the technology behind cryptocurrencies confusing, but the investment process is intimidating… or at least it used to be.
Now investors looking to score on the crypto-currencies market in their regular brokerage account are in luck.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
Is the Stock Market Correction Over? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend – The bull market is continuing with a top expected in the low 3000s.
Intermediate trend – An intermediate correction from 2872 may be over.
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, February 26, 2018
A Newbie's Guide to Investing in Stocks / InvestorEducation / Learning to Invest
The stock market can be a daunting experience for a beginner. However, investing in shares will provide you with an opportunity to gain greater returns. There are two different ways to have an access to the stock market: investing directly or indirectly.
Investing Directly
Direct investments mean you are buying shares from a single company and become one of their shareholders. There are many available broker services. Some offer tailored advice and bespoke services like Redmayne Bentley, Killik & Co, and Charles Stanley. However, there are also others who only execute share dealing services.
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Monday, February 26, 2018
Xi Jinping Seeks to Become Permanent Dictator of China, Time for a New Peoples Revolution! / Politics / China
Rongxian Mu writes: The central committee of the communist party of China comprising 200 people has decided to do away with the 2 term 10 year limit for appointed dictators of our great nation, which at least gave the illusion of choice by the 5000 or so communist party members every 10 years, instead now the way is being paved for Xi Jinping to be appointed as dictator for life!
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Sunday, February 25, 2018
2018: The Year Of The Margin Call / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Indicators of a market top began piling up way back in 2014, and since then most have gone on to unprecedented extremes. Every analyst has their favorite harbinger of financial doom, but the easiest to understand — and the most tragic — is probably margin debt.
This is money borrowed by (usually individual or “retail”) investors against their existing stocks to buy more stocks. Investors tend to do this when markets are rising and using leverage seems like an effortless way turbocharge their gains. But eventually the market turns down, leaving stock portfolios insufficient to cover related margin debt and generating “margin calls” in which brokers demand more money and/or start liquidating customer portfolios. This sends the market down sharply and indiscriminately, as fairly-valued babies are dumped along with overvalued bathwater. The result: a quick, brutal bear market.
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Sunday, February 25, 2018
Gold Setting Up For A Massive Upside Price Rally / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Over the past few months, our research team has nailed many of the recent moves in the Metals market thanks to our advanced price modeling systems and detailed research. Recently, we’ve been watching a setup play out in Gold that has excited us. The potential for a massive upside rally that should originate as early as March 19 (only a few weeks away). The reason this is so exciting is that a breakout move in the gold market would indicate a global rush into a protective market because of fears originating from other market sectors.
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Sunday, February 25, 2018
Heavy Police, SIA Security and Media Presence for Sheffield Tree Fellings Monday Meersbrook Park Road / Local / Sheffield
After a 4 week break the felling of mostly healthy Sheffield street trees is to resume on Monday 26th Feb from about 7am, as streets such as Meersbrook Park Road and Chatsworth Road will be flooded with police and SIA security personnel tasked with ejecting any peaceful protestors from the cordoned off zones around trees ear marked for destruction. Therefore as was the case a few weeks ago, the protestors are likely to be even more far outnumbered by SIA security and police then in January.
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Sunday, February 25, 2018
Bastiat Knew the Proper Limits of Government Force / Politics / UK Politics
High school students in the United States are usually required to take a course in government. They learn about the structure of government but rarely discover the appropriate role of government or the justifiable limits for the use of force in our society. If they did, one of their required readings would be Frédéric Bastiat’s treatise The Law, a seminal mid-Nineteenth-century work that describes eternal truths about life and how we pursue justice. These truths are just as valid today as they were then.
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