Category: Financial Markets 2012
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Financial Algorithmic Trading and Knight Capital Calamity / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: BATR
Once all the rage was arbitrage trading. High frequency trading then became the catchphrase. Now the latest scheme to insert financial nanotech - rage against the machine – practices called algorithmic trading created an automated loss of historic proportions. The Knight Capital calamity gave rise to rogue mathematics gone amuck. What a surprise! Removing buy or sell decisions from human hands is the quickest way to destroy a company that took years to build. How the euphemism "TRADING" applies to the upheaval of computerized speculation, could only make sense in the weird world of Wall Street accounting.
Monday, August 06, 2012
Could Speed-of-Light Market Trading Trigger The Next Systemic Crisis? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: DK_Matai
Computers don't sleep, don't get tired, don't care about politics and don't go on holiday in August -- but they can wreak havoc in the global financial marketplace by amplifying moves on the up- and down-sides as we recently saw with the "Dark" Knight fiasco involving 140 stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange of which nearly 40 moved more than 10% in less than an hour. The "Knightmare on Wall Street" has cast new doubts on the automated High-Frequency Trading (HFT) systems that now totally dominate global exchange trading, despite multi-million-dollar lobby groups proclaiming from rooftops that HFT is not only safe and stabilising but beneficial to humankind. Powerful algorithms -- “algos” in industry parlance -- execute millions of orders per second and can scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously. They can not only spot trends before other investors can blink, changing orders and strategies automatically within milliseconds, they can also choreograph and co-ordinate strategies across geographies and asset classes.
Sunday, August 05, 2012
Market Outlook for Metals, Stocks and U.S. Dollar / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Chad_Bennis
This past week saw a number of headline driven news as central banks attempt to intervene in the global economic fiasco. They have pledged to goose the monetary supply by instituting bond purchasing programs in their respective nations, but all we have is talk and the action is yet to come. So, let’s take a step back and examine the technical picture outside of any promises to act.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Keynesian Investors Being Ground into Euro Dust / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Gary_North
Occasionally, I read something in the mainstream financial media whose degree of delusion takes my breath away. This is such a sentence (August 2, 2012).
Read full article... Read full article...U.S stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Thursday, with investors hoping the European Central Bank will signal further measures to aid growth and prevent the euro zone collapsing.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Fed Hits Kill Switch On Market Liquidity / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Clif_Droke
Lately investors have been worried about liquidity, specifically the central bank's willingness (or unwillingness) to continue providing it, and with good reason. Without periodic injections of liquidity, investors eventually lose interest as financial markets begin to languish. And in a financial economy like the U.S., the death of a bull market means the death of the economic recovery.
Bull markets are to a large extent liquidity driven affairs. Without an abundance of excess monetary liquidity sloshing through the financial market, stocks and commodities have little hope of developing the necessary ingredient of forward momentum. Momentum is what attracts an ever-growing number of investors to participate in a bull market, which in turn is what keeps the bull market going. When liquidity dries up, momentum perishes and investors quickly lose interest. This, in a nutshell, is how bull markets turn into bear markets, viz. the absence of liquidity.
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Friday, August 03, 2012
Knight Capital and High Frequency Trading Making Markets Skittish / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Bloomberg
Dinakar Singh, founder of $4 billion hedge fund TPG-Axon Capital, spoke with Bloomberg TV’s Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle on “Market Makers” today, saying that investors are scared and are paying a lot for safety. Singh said that the commodities “super cycle” is over because of falling Chinese productivity and profits—and that profits are improving the most in Japan.
Singh went on to say that he sees growth in the chemical, health-care and aerospace industries and likes Sirius XM and W.R. Grace. He also said “we are bearish on some financials, U.S. regional banks especially” and that he is betting against telecom stocks.
Friday, August 03, 2012
Euro Crisis - What Crisis? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Christopher_Quigley
"The European Central Bank indicated on Thursday (2nd. August) it may again start buying government bonds to reduce crippling Spanish and Italian borrowing costs but the conditions it set and the dissenting voice of its key German member disappointed markets.In the latest move to contain the eurozone crisis, ECB President Mario Draghi indicated that any intervention would not come before September - and only if governments activated the euro zone's bail-out funds to join the ECB in buying bonds.
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Friday, August 03, 2012
Lose $10 Million Per Minute for 45 Minutes Non-Stop, Computerised Trading losses Mount at the Dark Knight / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: DK_Matai
Algorithms Rule This Asymmetric Brave New World
Welcome to this asymmetric brave new world ruled by computerised algorithms that are causing more chaos in minutes than what human-beings were previously able to bring about in decades. The Knight Capital Group, the Jersey City, New Jersey-based brokerage firm -- one of America’s biggest market makers -- announced on Thursday that it lost $440 million because of a mis-firing computer program, which carried out nonsensical trades for three quarters of an hour on Wednesday before it was shut down. The losses caused by computerised trading malfunction are greater than the company’s consolidated revenue of $289 million in the second quarter of this year, never mind its earnings or profits. Knight’s automated high frequency trading algorithmic computer program ran out of control for about 45 minutes, which means the company lost $10 million for each minute the new software was running. A non-human employee of Knight Capital -- not a human rogue trader on this occasion -- executed the crippling damage in less than one hour on one of America's largest brokerage houses which had been going strong for nearly two decades.
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Friday, August 03, 2012
World Economies In Uncharted Financial Territory, Hold Cash and Gold / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Bill_Bonner
Bill Bonner stakes out “uncharted territory” in an interview with The Money and Wealth Show…
Thursday, August 02, 2012
Systemic Upheaval, Economic Recovery Vs Propaganda Reality Check / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Jim_Willie_CB
Some extremely powerful differentials in power are setting themselves up, in a manner never seen before in modern history. Those who dismiss the uniqueness of the situation are those who continually are surprised by events as they unfold. The pressure features the managers of the system, complete with corruption and fraud with official coverups in a never-ending sequence of crime scenes, pitted against the forces of justice and fair markets. Not a single fair market exists in USDollar terms. In pure Orwellian style, every single market has a US-based or London-based financial engineer at a control panel doing duty in price intervention. The Western defenders of the syndicate do not wish for the price structure to reflect the reality of physical shortage or the bounty of paper-based surplus, for the currencies to reflect true toxic value, and for the discovery price systems to reflect the raids of private accounts. The system is broken, and the pressure is building.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
The Federal Reserve, Gold, Oil, and U.S. Dollar’s Demise / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Chris_Vermeulen
“We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it”. ~ Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932 (Rep. Pa) ~
The above quote coming from the Honorable Louis T. McFadden is a quite prescient statement as it relates to arguably the most evil enterprise in American history.
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Friday, July 27, 2012
SP500, Russell 2K, Dollar Index and Gold’s – Fake out or Shakeout / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: J_W_Jones
Today has been quite a trading session with risk assets rocketing higher after Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank reiterated what has already been stated. The S&P 500 Index (SPX) is posting some nice gains, but price has not taken out the recent ascending trendline illustrated in the daily chart of SPX shown below. Until that ascending trendline is taken out, the bears remain in control of the price action.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Financial Markets Forecasting is Looking Bleak / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Chris_Vermeulen
I hope you had a great summer weekend.
This week could be a huge one for stocks and commodities. This morning the dollar index is taking another run at our weekly chart resistance level. If it can break out and start to rally this week then a possible 4-6 week sell off in stocks and commodities may be just starting.
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Friday, July 20, 2012
Why Won't Fine Art Market Collapse? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Adrian_Ash
What were once merely baubles are now being touted as investment necessity...
The ODDEST THING thing about today's Great Depression? asks Adrian Ash at BullionVault. The lack of a collapse in the art market.
Previously a bellwether for the global economy, turnover in fine art sank by three-fifths in the early '90s. It tanked again in the early Noughts, taking the revenues (and equity valuations) of the big auction houses down with it.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Markets Kicking and Screaming, Gold Bottom in Place / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: HRA_Advisory
With summer doldrums well and truly upon us markets have been drifting lower on low volume and trying to hold their May lows. Most metals and certainly gold have performed better and seem to have bottoms in place.
After such a long bear run it's not likely we will get a huge bounce during the summer when so many are trying not to think about the market. Not every stock is falling however. As we note in the updates there are three companies on the HRA list that have been getting a lot more attention from traders and several others that are getting traction based on results to come. That isn't much but it is an improvement. We don't know yet how "real" any of these discoveries are, but new finds are the shortest route to renewed investor interest in the sector.
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Sunday, July 15, 2012
Beginning Sovereign Debt Crisis Endgame, Attack of the Zombie Banks and the New Religion of Europe / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: John_Mauldin
About this time two years ago I began to seriously work with Jonathan Tepper on our book Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changed Everything. It came out the following March. I remember vividly that in November of that year, as crisis after crisis hit Europe, and the first of about 20 summit meetings which were supposed to solve the crisis was convened, that Jonathan and I worried that the book would not be out in time to actually catch the Endgame before it happened (at least in Europe).
Thursday, July 12, 2012
US-Economy on Brink of “Double-dip” Recession as Computer Cowboys Invade Commodity Markets / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Gary_Dorsch
For most of Wall Street’s history, trading in equities was fairly straightforward: buyers and sellers gathered on exchange floors and haggled until they struck a deal. Computerized trading of stocks didn’t arrive onto the Wall Street scene until the 1980’s. Computer guided “Program trading,” - defined by the NYSE as an order to buy or sell 15-stocks or more, valued at over $1-million total, was blamed for the “Black Monday” Crash of October 1987. Then, in 1998, the internet opened-up markets to anyone with a desktop computer, and a trading idea. Since then, computer trading programs have grown vastly more powerful and the algorithms that guide their trading vastly more sophisticated.
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Markets, Economies, Central Banks - All Out of Power! / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Sy_Harding
Having topped out into corrections in March and April, most global markets rallied back some in June, fueled by hopes that June’s unusual schedule of promising events would provide rescues for the eurozone and the U.S. economy. As those events arrived, if one or two failed to produce results, the rally only paused momentarily as there were still remaining events that might produce results.
Friday, July 06, 2012
Measuring Global Econcomic Health, How is Dr Copper Feeling? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
By: Casey_Research
Louis James and Andrey Dashkov, Casey Research writes:
Copper is sometimes referred to as "Dr. Copper," because the metal is used in so many industrial applications and is essential for many different sectors of the economy, from infrastructure to housing to consumer electronics. That usually makes its price action a good indicator of the state of the global economy.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
NO - A Profound Exercise of Freedom / Politics / Financial Markets 2012
By: Barry_M_Ferguson
From Dictionary.com, the word ‘no’ means ‘a negative used to express dissent, denial, or refusal, as in response to a question’. It seems to be such a simple word. But, the power of ‘no’ is lost on modern society. The ability to exercise the word ‘no’ is a profound exercise of freedom. If we can’t say ‘no’, then we have no freedom. Slaves cannot exercise the word ‘no’.