Saturday, September 16, 2017
Deceit in the Financial Food Chain / Stock-Markets / Market Regulation
I recently watched The Big Short, the 2015 movie recounting the housing crisis. I avoided the movie, and the book of the same name, for years. But I saw the title on Netflix and thought, “Now’s the time.”I didn’t sidestep it for lack of interest. Just the opposite. As a former bond trader I have a keen interest in the debt markets.
I followed the crisis’ every twist and turn, starting in the summer of 2007 when a quiet little corner of the bond market – municipal bond floating-rate note auctions – blew up. I found the steps leading to the crisis, and the events in the aftermath, appalling.
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Saturday, September 16, 2017
Gold GLD ETF Investment Resuming / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
Gold has surged dramatically to major breakouts since its usual summer-doldrums lows. That’s naturally rekindled interest in this leading alternative investment, despite the record-high stock markets. Investors are starting to return to gold again to prudently diversify their stock-heavy portfolios. That’s very bullish for gold, as investment capital inflows can persist for months or even years. This shift is most evident in GLD.
The American SPDR Gold Shares is the world’s leading and dominant gold exchange-traded fund. Since its birth way back in November 2004, it has acted as a conduit for the vast pools of stock-market capital to migrate into and out of physical gold bullion. The marginal gold investment demand, and sometimes supply, via GLD can be big and varies wildly. Thus GLD-share trading is often gold’s primary short-term driver.
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Saturday, September 16, 2017
Will Eurozone Growth Boost Gold Prices? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
The euro has appreciated about 13 percent against the U.S. dollar so far this year, as the chart below shows. Although it seemed ready to reach parity with the greenback or even to break up, the shared currency was the top-performing currency in the G10 in the first half of the year. Now, there is a hot debate about the future of the euro. As the EUR/USD exchange rate is one of the crucial drivers of gold prices (see the chart below), let’s analyze the outlook for the Eurozone and its currency.
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Saturday, September 16, 2017
Bitcoin Drops After China Ban / Currencies / Bitcoin
Bitcoin is now present in mainstream media. On the Bloomberg Markets website, we read:
Bitcoin fell for a fifth day, the longest losing streak in more than a year, after one of China’s largest online exchanges said it would stop handling trades by the end of the month amid a government crackdown on cryptocurrencies.
BTC China will immediately stop accepting new account registrations on its BTCChina Exchange, Chief Executive Bobby Lee said Thursday in a tweet. The decision was made after “carefully considering” the Sept. 4 announcement by Chinese regulators that outlawed initial coin offerings, he said.
(…)
Friday, September 15, 2017
Here’s Why The Defense Stocks Sector Is The Best Trade Today / Companies / Sector Analysis
BY PATRICK WATSON : September is not unfolding as expected.
Just a few weeks ago, this month was supposed to bring an angry stand-off in Washington and possibly a government shutdown or debt default. Those could still happen, but President Trump’s deal with the Democrats pushed it back to December.
And then we have the threat of nuclear war.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
US Government’s Promised Entitlements Exceed the Budget Seven Times in Some States / Politics / US Debt
The US government balance sheet features $80 trillion to $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities. This amount stems from future entitlement program burdens that are, in effect, government promises.
No one is going to vote to reduce their entitlements. (Well, other than the very well-off, who don’t actually need those entitlements.)
Unfunded pension liabilities at the state and local have swollen to roughly $4–$6 trillion in the United States. And that may be understating the severity of the problem.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
EURGBP Broke Below Trend Line Support / Currencies / Euro
EURGBP recently broke below the bullish trend line at 0.9050 on its daily chart. The subsequent fall had taken price to as low as 0.8866, indicating that the upside movement from 0.8313 had completed at 0.9306 already.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
Extreme Weather & Energy Markets: What's Next? - Video / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
Given the recent hurricanes and intense volatility across commodity markets, anticipating fluctuations in crude and natural gas has rarely been this challenging. In this new interview, Steve Craig, the editor of our Energy Pro Service, explains how he uses the Elliott Wave Principle to make sense of it all.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
Trump’s Path to IP Wars / Politics / Protectionism
As the White House is about to escalate trade friction in intellectual property, it has opted for a flawed, partisan approach.In mid-August, President Trump asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, a veteran Reagan administration trade hawk, to open an investigation into China's intellectual property (IP) practices.
The first public hearing about Chinese trade conduct is scheduled for October 10 in Washington.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
GBP USD Approaches Fibonacci Target / Currencies / Forex Trading
Good evening to you all.
Another day, another all time high in the DOW, and another step closer to the target zone.
The wave count is working well on this front,
And I am sure we will see a break above 22300's before long,
But what amazes' me everyday,
is the sheer lack of interest in questioning this now eight year long rally.
It is taken for granted like milk in the supermarket.
Friday, September 15, 2017
Higher US Interest Rates May Force Higher Inflation Rates / Economics / Inflation
Summary:
1) Financial analysis of the three way relationship between interest rates, inflation and the U.S. national debt.
2) Higher interest rates causing higher interest payments on the $20 trillion national debt would ordinarily cause soaring deficits over time.
3) Detailed analysis of the "loophole", which is that if inflation even moderately increases - then interest rates can rise without exploding the real debt.
4) This simultaneous increase in interest rates and inflation would have a major impact on all markets, as well as long term retirement planning.
5) The logical response to rising interest rates may be to sharpen one's focus on how to better deal with higher rates of inflation over the long term.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
Stock Market Investors: Taking the Road "Less Traveled" Has Its Perks / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
Using the same market indicators everyone else uses can lead you to make the same mistakes everyone else makes. Here's a chart that proves the point -- you won't see this one elsewhere.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
The 3 Best P2P Lending Platforms For Investors In 2017—Detailed Analysis / Companies / Investing 2017
BY STEPHEN MCBRIDE : Peer-to-peer lending (P2P) is a new method of debt financing that allows people to borrow and lend money without a financial institution. Harnessing technology and big data, P2P platforms connect borrowers to investors faster and cheaper than any bank.
P2P lending has grown rapidly in recent years and is a new source of fixed income for investors (download our new special report on investing in P2P loans for more). Compared to stock markets, P2P investments have less volatility and a low correlation. They also offer higher returns than conventional sources of yield.
With interest rates at all-time lows since 2008 and many historically “safe” investments like government bonds offering measly returns, investing in P2P loans in 2017 is a no-brainer.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
The US Debt Bubble Will Soon Warrant Serious Measures / Interest-Rates / US Debt
There is big debate over the exact amount of global debt.
Parts of it get hidden in many out-of-the-way pockets. But broadly speaking, global debt is about 325% of GDP, and likely over $225 trillion as I write.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
US Budget Deficit Swindling Futurity / Interest-Rates / US Debt
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” ― Thomas Jefferson
Yesterday the government reported a “modest” August budget deficit of $108 billion. That’s one month folks. This is another example of how the government and their mainstream media mouthpieces portray horrifically bad, extremely abnormal financial data as normal and expected. They pretend everything that has happened since 2008 is just standard operating procedure. They follow the Big Lie theory to the extreme. The masses have been so dumbed down, desensitized, and taught to believe delusions, they can’t distinguish the abnormal from the normal.
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Friday, September 15, 2017
Why it is Often Difficult to Sell a House Fast / Housing-Market / UK Housing
It is indeed often quite a chore-like process, trying to sell a home for a decent price, without having to cut down on the actual worth of the home so much that you do not make as much profit as you would otherwise need to relocate to a nice home.
When attempting to sell your home quickly, there are some factors which may hinder such a process. This article will look at some of the reasons why such an undesirable sluggishness befalls your sales process.
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Thursday, September 14, 2017
S&P 500 At New Record High, Will It Break Above 2,500? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
Briefly:
Intraday trade: Our yesterday's neutral intraday outlook has proved accurate. The S&P 500 index fluctuated within a relatively narrow trading range following Tuesday's advance. The market may retrace some of its recent rally today, as the S&P 500 index trades close to potential resistance level of 2,500. On the other hand, support level is relatively close, at Tuesday's daily gap up of 2,488.95-2,490.37. Therefore, we prefer to be out of the market once again, avoiding low risk/reward ratio trades.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
The $10 Trillion Resource North Korea Can't Tap / Commodities / Metals & Mining
North Korea may not have proved petroleum reserves, but it’s estimated that the secluded belligerent nation sits on reserves of more than 200 minerals—including rare earth minerals—worth an estimated up to US$10 trillion.
Of course, there are no official reports on how much North Korea’s mineral wealth really is, but according to rough estimates from earlier this decade, Pyongyang’s deposits of coal, iron ore, zinc, copper, graphite, gold, silver, magnesite, molybdenite, and many others, are worth between US$6 trillion and US$10 trillion, as per South Korean projections reported by Quartz.
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Thursday, September 14, 2017
EURUSD Is Facing Channel Support / Currencies / Euro
EURUSD stays in a bullish price channel on its daily chart and remains in the uptrend from 1.0569. As long as the price is in the channel, the fall from 1.2092 could be treated as consolidation of the uptrend and the bullish movement could be expected to continue after the consolidation.
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Thursday, September 14, 2017
Capital Market Trends / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2017
Financial trading is a type of trading that is changing all the time. This is good news for the participants in this form of trading because according to many experts, they can expect better user experience compared to the situation that they could’ve expected a few years ago. Of course, the most important change in this field is the fact that the financial trading today is automated and electronic in its essence. In the past, the entire process of trading was manual. The role of modern technology is crucial for modern-day financial trading. But, just like financial trading, technology is changing too. It looks like this is one of the fastest changing industries in the world. All these changes have an impact on financial trading and ultimately on the capital market. Those who want to witness success must analyze the latest capital market trends. We will use this article to highlight the most important trends.
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