Monday, July 24, 2017
Saving Illinois: Getting More Bang for Its Bucks / Politics / Debt Crisis 2017
By: Ellen_Brown
Illinois is insolvent, unable to pay its bills. According to Moody’s, the state has $15 billion in unpaid bills and $251 billion in unfunded liabilities. Of these, $119 billion are tied to shortfalls in the state’s pension program. On July 6, 2017, for the first time in two years, the state finally passed a budget, after lawmakers overrode the governor’s veto on raising taxes. But they used massive tax hikes to do it – a 32% increase in state income taxes and 33% increase in state corporate taxes – and still Illinois’ new budget generates only $5 billion, not nearly enough to cover its $15 billion deficit.
Monday, July 24, 2017
3 Stocks Sectors That Will Win in The Fed’s Great Balance-Sheet Unwind / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: John_Mauldin
BY STEPHEN MCBRIDE : In its June meeting, the Fed pledged to begin the unwind of its $4.47 trillion balance sheet in September.
Each month, about $50 billion in Treasury bonds on the Fed’s ledger reach maturity. Then the Fed buys new bonds to replace them.
The first step in the “great unwind” will be to let a portion of these maturing bonds roll off the balance sheet.
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Monday, July 24, 2017
Commercial Property Market Is Inflated and May Burst Again / Housing-Market / European Housing
By: GoldCore
by David McWilliams : Dublin property investors had better hope that Brexit happens soon.
They should also hope that it’s not just a ‘hard’ Brexit, but a granite Brexit — a Brexit that’s as hard as possible. They should be betting on the buffoonery of Boris Johnson, down on both knees praying for a massive barney between Davis and Barnier.
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Monday, July 24, 2017
5 Reasons to Fear the Stock Market Fall / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Michael_Pento
This powerful and protracted bull market has made Cassandras look foolish for a long time. Those who went on record predicting that massive central bank manipulation of markets would not engender viable economic growth have been proven correct. However, these same individuals failed to fully anticipate the willingness of momentum-trading algorithms to take asset prices very far above the underlying level of economic growth.
Monday, July 24, 2017
First-time Home Buyers: Wave Goodbye to Record Low Interest Rates / Housing-Market / Mortgages
By: MoneyFacts
Borrowers have been treated to record low mortgage rates, but while rates remain at their lowest for those with large deposits, research from moneyfacts.co.uk shows that for those with a small deposit the trend seems to be reversing. In fact, the average two-year fixed rate at 95% loan-to-value (LTV) has increased by 0.10% since April and a shocking 0.35% since the start of the year.
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Monday, July 24, 2017
S&P 500 Pushing the Envelope - Stock Market Crash 2017 / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Submissions
Rajveer Rawlin writes: Looking at the weekly close on the S and p 500 since 1950 its average close stands at 522 while the standard deviation stands at 606. One of the few markets in the world where the standard deviation exceeds the mean. This is also true with other US Indices like the Dow and the Nasdaq but is not the case with Emerging markets. This has been the case with US markets since 1998 when the FED intervened in the market to bail out the failing LTCM. Subsequent Fed intervention has caused the risk in the market to go up and not come down.
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Monday, July 24, 2017
Activist Investors Are Taking Over Wall Street, Procter and Gamble Might Never Remain the Same / Companies / Corporate News
By: Boris_Dzhingarov
In February, billionaire investor Nelson Peltz revealed that he had purchased a $3.5 billion stake in Procter & Gamble Co (NYSE:PG) through his investment firm, Trian Partners. Wall Street suspected that the purchase was part of a grand strategy even though Mr. Peltz didn’t offer any proposals on making changes in the company. Market analysts surmised that the billionaire investor was bidding his time – now it seems that Peltz indeed had plans to make some changes at Procter & Gamble after all.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 24, 2017
Gold Price Broke Above Trend Line Resistance / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Franco_Shao
XAUUSD recently broke above the support-turned-resistance trend line at 1237 on its daily chart, indicating that the downside movement from 1295.94 had completed at 1204.77 already.
Monday, July 24, 2017
Are US Stocks in a Bubble / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: The_Gold_Report
Rudi Fronk and Jim Anthony, the cofounders of Seabridge Gold, examine the role of risk when trying to differentiate between a bull market and a bubble.
As we have noted, there is a very important difference between a bull market and a bubble. Valuations are certainly one means of distinguishing them. In retrospect, we can recognize previous historic bubbles such as 1929 and 2000. When basic ratios such as Price-to-Sales and Tobins' Q have reached the levels that marked these bubbles, as they have, we can make a reasonable inference that another bubble has formed.
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Monday, July 24, 2017
5 Things I Look for in Exploration Companies / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2017
By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne
Three months ago (April) we covered the reasons we primarily invest in junior exploration companies. We promised to follow up with some criteria we follow in attempting to pick winners. Here are five things we look for when evaluating and selecting junior exploration companies.
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Monday, July 24, 2017
Stock Market Still on Track / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Andre_Gratian
Current Position of the Market
SPX Long-term trend: Uptrend continues with a serious loss of upside momentum in weekly indicators.
SPX Intermediate trend: An ending diagonal appears to be in its last stage of completion (5).
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 discuss longer market trends.
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Monday, July 24, 2017
Macbeth, King Lear and Trump / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Mea culpa. Yesterday I wrote Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?, and not long after publishing it, I figured I missed the target I was going for. Not 100%, and it’s not all bad, as people’s reactions have confirmed, but…
The thing is, Trump’s nomination of Anthony Scaramucci as White House Communications Director was not the main point of my piece. Tempting, because everybody knows the Queen song, but not the main one, and it certainly shouldn’t have been the title of the piece.
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Monday, July 24, 2017
Last Chance For US Dollar To Rally / Currencies / US Dollar
By: Gary_Savage
I think we need to focus on what is happening to the dollar. The intermediate cycle is now 63 weeks long. Clearly that isn’t normal. I’ve maintained for several years that the end game was going to play out in the currency markets. There has to be consequences to printing trillions and trillions of currency units , and leaving interest rates at 0 for 8 years. I don’t think the consequences are going to be deflation. I think the end game will be inflation, just like it was in the 70’s, and just like it was in 2007 and 2008.
It’s taken a while to manifest as other countries have jumped into the game and turned on their printing presses as well, so the collapse in the currency I’ve been looking for has taken quite a while to unfold. The first leg down ended in 2008.
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Sunday, July 23, 2017
Scaramucci Trump's Phase2 - Scaramouche, Scaramouche, Will You Do the Fandango? / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
So sorry to see Sean Spicer go, even if I never watch TV, so I only got snippets of his acting performances -and Melissa McCarthy’s. One of the very few SNL and other ‘comedy’ shows skids that was actually funny, in the same way that very few of the New York Times and Washington Post ‘articles’ on Trump have been actually news.
As I wrote to a friend earlier today, sure Spicer’s gone, but there’ll be other entertaining characters to replace him. Say what you will about the Trump administration, but never a dull moment. Having Mike Pence become president would kill all the fun.
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Sunday, July 23, 2017
Sheffield Tramlines Music Festival 2017 at Peace Gardens / Local / Sheffield
By: Anika_Walayat
Sheffield is holding it's annual Tramlines Music festival weekend (Friday 21st to Sunday 23rd July), with music stages situated not just across the city centre but across many of Sheffield's best parks, pumping out music to cater for all tastes, and you don't have to pay for expensive wrist bands to enjoy the Tramlines experience as there are many free stages across the city such as in the Peace Gardens which we visited Saturday amongst other venues. Here's how the Peace Gardens music went down, where the crowd was about half that of last year, probably due to a poor weather forecast for Saturday. And remember that Tramlines continues Sunday across the city for its third and final day.
Saturday, July 22, 2017
UK House Prices Momentum Crash Warns of 2017 Bear Market - Video / Housing-Market / UK Housing
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The June 8th general election result delivering 'chaos and uncertainty' instead of 'strong and stable' not only shocked Britain's political and media establishment but also looks like the UK economy suffered a heart attack with confidence fast evaporating as the economy slows down which makes a mockery of the Bank of England MPC clowns persisting in their talk of raising UK interest rates this year. And along with evaporating economic confidence is the confidence in the UK housing market that risks bringing a 5 year housing bull market to an abrupt end! And this is even before we see the chaos that will ensue once Theresa May quits as PM that risks triggering another chaos inducing general election!
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Crude Oil, Gold, ETFs & more: Pro-grade Market Forecasts / Commodities / Commodities Trading
By: EWI
Dear Investor,
Are you paying attention to commodities? You should be.
Major moves in oil, gold and other commodities have offered up huge opportunities for traders in 2017.
Our friends at Elliott Wave International have kept our subscribers ahead of many big commodity moves.
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Saturday, July 22, 2017
Prepare for a 30-year Stocks Bull Market / Stock-Markets / Stocks Bull Market
By: Clif_Droke
Heading into 2017, Wall Street was excited by the prospect of a U.S. president who sympathized completely with business. His promised tax and healthcare reforms were widely cheered by investors in the wake of his election. Yet the Congress has so far failed to deliver on those promises and investors are no longer giving the Trump administration a free pass based on the assumption that tax breaks are on the way.
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Market Reality Is Going to Bite Back Soon / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Enda_Glynn
My Bias: short in wave (3) red.
Wave Structure: downward impulse wave
Long term wave count: lower in wave (3) red
Important risk events: EUR: Flash Manufacturing PMI, Flash Services PMI.
Friday, July 21, 2017
Are Central Bankers Secretly Terrified? / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Graham_Summers
Central Bankers are absolutely terrified.
In the last month, both Fed President Janet Yellen and ECB President Mario Draghi have issued somewhat hawkish statements, only to turn around within 48 hours and walk back their comments.
Again, two of the most powerful Central Bankers in the world couldn’t even last three days being hawks.
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