Sunday, December 18, 2016

Freedom in America Disappearing in Plain Sight / Politics / US Politics

By: Stephen_Lendman

The republic was founded “in strict secrecy,” Benjamin Franklin explained. When asked “what have we got, a republic or a monarchy,” he responded “(a) republic, if you can keep it.”

Today he’d say a coup to destroy it is underway in plain sight, the last vestiges of freedom fading with it - a fascist dictatorship emerging, far more ruthless and dangerous than others in world history.

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Stock Market Consolidation? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Andre_Gratian

Current Position of the Market

SPX Long-term trend: If the market strength persists, the long-term trend may need to be re-evaluated.

SPX Intermediate trend: SPX intermediate P&F count to 2270 has now been met, but there are higher counts that could still be filled before a serious reversal take place.

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.

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Santa Claus to Extend Trump Stock Market Rally? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Brad_Gudgeon

In this article, I’m going to point to reasons why I believe this rally has some more juice left in it.  I also want to warn that early next year, what I thought would happen in November 2016 should happen in March/April 2017, and that is a 14+% drop.

The Trump phenomenon seems to have caused the normal cycles to misbehave and extend. After further examination into Primary Wave 4, I have come to the conclusion that I need to revise the timing of the final Millennial Wave top out to a possible 3 years (that IF is Intermediate Wave Z of Primary Wave 4 extends out to the end of 2018 instead of year end 2017).

Sunday, December 18, 2016

US DEBT - A Total Disregard For Fiscal Responsibility / Interest-Rates / US Debt

By: Andy_Sutton

While we aren’t sure the coast is clear – yet – the show must indeed go on. There are topics that need to be discussed. Now with the whole new concept of ‘fake news’ out there for the sole purpose of discrediting anything the establishment wants off the radar we’re going to have to ask you to look at the decade’s worth of work that has been poured into this column and decide if we are fake or not.

For the sake of honesty, it must be pointed out that the mainstream media, in a classic false flag type move, created the whole idea of fake news with its own ridiculous material, then used the whole stunt to say ‘see, we need to be careful because there are lots of phonies out there’. Darn right there are. We’ll allow that there are quite a few shills in the alternative media. Their betrayal will be exposed in time, but for the most part the phonies have three letter network affiliations attached to them.

Sunday, December 18, 2016

US Bond Market Implosion Continues / Interest-Rates / US Bonds

By: Gary_Savage

The Bond Implosion Continues

Is the bond market implosion the next black swan event that everyone is ignoring?

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Trumping the Environment / Politics / Environmental Issues

By: Walter_Brasch

Whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was elected, the environment is going to suffer.

Both have supported horizontal fracking, the destruction of the earth to extract oil and gas. The use of fracking is so harmful to the environment and public health that numerous banks refuse to lend funds to individuals who wish to build or sell their houses near drilling operations. Numerous lenders have also refused to loan money to corporations that wish to drill.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Cheap Multi-Colured Battery Powered Christmas String Fairy Lights Review - PowerBee / ConsumerWatch / Reviews

By: Anika_Walayat

Here is our review of typical battery powered cheap (£12) 100 LED string fairy christmas lights bought online from PowerBee but are fairly standard across a range of suppliers, these as is the case with most similar lights have a built in 6 hour switched on timer,and come with 8 modes of operation.

Find out what they look like when up, how well they perform, and how long the batteries and lights actually last for i.e. how many christmases can one get out of using these cheap fairy lights.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Stocks Just Triggered a Major “Topping” Signal… Next Up is the Bloodbath / Stock-Markets / Stock Market Crash

By: Graham_Summers

The markets are priming for a major inflection point.

I cannot remember a time when investors were more bullish. The Dow is currently more overbought (based on the 14 day relative strength index) than at any point in the last 20 years.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

US Housing Starts Dive 18.7 Percent as Mortgage Interest Rates Soar / Housing-Market / US Housing

By: Mike_Shedlock

The often volatile housing starts numbers took another dive this report, down 18.7% in November according to the Census Bureau New Residential Construction report for November 2016.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

The 70-year US Treasury Bond Market Cycle and SPX Stocks Bull Market / Stock-Markets / US Bonds

By: Tony_Caldaro

The market started the week at SPX 2260. After a slightly lower open on Monday the SPX rallied to the current uptrend high at 2278 on Tuesday. On Wednesday the FED raised rates for the first time in a year and the market pulled back to SPX 2248. Then a rally on Thursday to SPX 2272 was followed by a smaller pullback into a Friday 2258 close. For the week the SPX/DOW were mixed, and the NDX/NAZ were mixed. Economics reports were plentiful and ended the week slightly positive. On the downtick: export/import prices, industrial production, capacity utilization, housing starts, build permits, plus the treasury budget increased. On the uptick: retail sales, the CPI/PPI, NY/Philly FED, the NAHB, the WLEI, plus weekly jobless claims declined. Next week’s reports will be highlighted by Q3 GDP, leading indicators and the PCE index. Best to your pre-holiday week!

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Stock Market Flirts With Dow 20k New All Time High / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Nadeem_Walayat

The Dow flirted with 20k this week, hitting a high of 19,966, literally within a few points of claiming the historic 20k level along its relentless bull market path. If one looks back to not just the start of 2016, but, well right up until AFTER the US polls closed on November 8th and beyond then its not just a case of Dow 20k could never happen but that the Dow 'should' by now be trading at well BELOW 15k. Whilst a few of the perma crowd had completely flipped imagining the Dow could trade down to as low as 6k! I suppose that's where the Dow needs to trade for some guys and gals just to BREAKEVEN after year after year of beartish rhetoric.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Financial Markets Award Trump Nobel Prize in Economics / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2016

By: David_Galland

Dear Parader,

As today we are headed north to spend Christmas with the family, Jake Weber, the invaluable senior researcher of our premium Compelling Investments Quantified (CIQ) service has kindly offered to fill in for this edition.

In his article, he delves into the economic and political challenges President Trump is facing and scans for any red flags flapping in the breeze.

On the topic of CIQ, we maintain a laser-like focus on finding great companies that sell below their intrinsic value—the only proven path to successful long-term investment.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

From Unloved & Unwanted to George Washington on Steroids: The U.S. Dollar / Currencies / US Dollar

By: EWI

From Unloved & Unwanted to George Washington on Steroids: The U.S. Dollar

Chart of the Day

Friday, December 16, 2016

The Stock Market Level To Watch / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

Dana Lyons (Tumblr.com) makes an interesting observation about a little-known index known as the Value Line Geometric Composite Index. In his article, he draws a straight line (red) at 500.00. and says. “This far and no further.”

He misses several points, which I would like to address. First, by drawing a horizontal bar, he misses the fact that the XVG was 27 points under it in 2000 and 23 points above it in 2015. By drawing a line that is peak-to-peak, you get a different picture. In fact, what comes to mind is an Orthodox Broadening Top (I added the lower trendline to complete the formation). This is a slight variation of what you see in the DJIA and SPX.

Friday, December 16, 2016

Radical Gold Under Investment / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: Zeal_LLC

Gold was again blasted to new post-election lows this week, further trashing contrarian sentiment.  The Fed proved more hawkish than expected in its rate-hike-trajectory forecast, unleashing heavy selling in gold futures.  This catapulted gold bearishness back up to extremes not seen in a year.  Investors are once again convinced gold is doomed, and thus radically underinvested.  That’s actually super-bullish for gold.

It certainly wasn’t the Fed’s second rate hike in 10.5 years this week that hammered gold.  Actually that was universally expected.  Federal-funds-futures traders had assigned it an average 96% probability in the two weeks leading up to that rate hike.  If the Fed had simply raised its federal-funds rate by 25 basis points to a 0.50%-to-0.75% range, gold-futures speculators would’ve likely yawned.  They knew it was coming.

Friday, December 16, 2016

Trump Rally and Irrelevant Dow Theory; What’s Next Stock Market Crash / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Sol_Palha

Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity. R. I. Fitzhenry

In September we penned a second article in the Alternative Dow theory series, titled “Dow theory no longer relevant-Better Alternative exists where we stated that the Dow theory as it stood was no longer relevant.  Here is a brief excerpt from that article.

The transports topped out in November of 2014, and according to the Dow theory this is a big negative;  the Dow industrials should have followed suit. Instead, the Dow soared higher paying no heed to this theory proving to a large degree that this theory has lost its value. After all, it is a theory and the definition of a theory is “a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.”

Friday, December 16, 2016

Gold & Miners Bottoming Signs / Commodities / Stock Markets 2016

By: Gary_Savage

A couple of months from now are traders going to look back and wonder how they could have ignored the bottoming signs?

Friday, December 16, 2016

Will Stock Market VIX Spike Today? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

Good Morning!

The SPX Premarket is up, as would be expected for the close of index options at today’s open. Volatility may spike at the open as options traders settle their trades. What happens after the institutions leave the scene?

Friday, December 16, 2016

Trump Making Deficits and Public Debt Great Again / Interest-Rates / US Debt

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

Trump’s economic agenda consists of foreign policy, fiscal policy and regulatory policy. We have already commented a bit about Trump’s imprint on geopolitics and uncertainty in the context of the gold market. Now, let’s focus on the domestic policies.

First, Trump wants to reduce regulations hampering business. During the campaign he called for a moratorium on new financial regulations and for a 70 percent reduction in regulations. Importantly, in his 100-day action plan, the president-elect proposed that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated. Deregulation should stimulate economic growth and the stock market, which is not good for the yellow metal.

Friday, December 16, 2016

The War on Cash Rages On in India and Venezuela / Currencies / War on Cash

By: Jeff_Berwick

Imagine you roll out of bed tomorrow to find out that US $100 and $50 bills were outlawed and deemed worthless?  Hard as it is to believe, this is now taking place in both Venezuela and India.

It’s a war on cash. And it’s coming soon to your doorstep.

This past Sunday, President Maduro, the tyrannical leader of the socialist paradise of Venezuela gave a three day warning that he was eliminating his country’s 100 bolivar bank note.