Monday, April 04, 2016

Stocks & shares ISAs Deliver Weakest Performance Since 2008 Financial Crisis / Personal_Finance / ISA's

By: MoneyFacts

· The average performance of a stocks & shares ISA has fallen by 2.7% during the 2015/16 tax year so far, the worst growth since the 2008 financial crisis.

· This compares with an average cash ISA rate of 1.44% over the same period.

· The average stocks & shares ISA has failed to deliver positive growth in seven of the 17 tax years since the introduction of ISAs in 1999.

Monday, April 04, 2016

The Pitfalls Of Buying Gold And Silver Online, And How To Avoid Them / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: John_Rubino

Back in 2014, online bullion dealer Tulving shocked its many customers by suddenly failing. See Coinweek’s story: How does $40M of Gold and Silver Disappear: The Collapse of Tulving Company

Last week another one bit the dust:

Monday, April 04, 2016

Stocks Russell 2000 Index Completes Significant Stocks Bear Market Signal / Stock-Markets / Stocks Bear Market

By: Dr_David_J_Harris

This article presents an analysis of the Russell 2000 index which is a US small-cap stock market index covering the bottom 2,000 stocks in the Russell 3000 index.

• The US Russell 2000 stock market index was commissioned in 1984 and has been in use for 32 years, along with the Russell 1000 index and the Russell 3000 index.
• Recently, at the end of Q1 2016, the Russell 2000 index completed a key bear market signal.
• Throughout the 32 years of the Russell 2000 index, this bear market signal has only been recorded once previously, and that was in early 2008 at the start of the previous major downturn often called the Great Recession.
• Price projection calculations indicate that the Russell 2000 has much further to fall, perhaps leading the major large cap US indexes down.
• There is some evidence to suggest that this downturn of the Russell 2000 may continue for a further 12 to 24 months before reaching a final bottom.

Monday, April 04, 2016

War on UK Buy to Let Property Market Sector Intensifies, Flats Particularly Perilous / Housing-Market / Buy to Let

By: Nadeem_Walayat

The latest bad news to hit the UK buy to let rental property investment sector was the announcement from the Bank of England to make conditions on buy to let mortgages much more stringent by going beyond the current norm of just mortgage interest being covered by the anticipated market rents, instead it has been proposed that at a minimum rent should be at 125% of mortgage interest payments, as well as taking into account all other costs incurred such as repairs, tax and voids, as part of a continuing trend to to make more properties available to first time buyers, that property investors have been busy buying up for well over a decade that has resulted in making it near impossible for first time buyers to step onto the bottom rung of the property ladder in many areas of the UK.

Monday, April 04, 2016

Sheffield Best Secondary Schools League Tables Trend Analysis 2015 / Local / Sheffield

By: Adnaan_Walayat

Whilst most parents / students look at the most recent Sheffield school league table in making their secondary school choices, however these can from time to time prove highly misleading as many of Sheffield's 37 Secondary schools / Academies for whatever reason exhibit volatility in performance from year to year therefore a currently high ranking school may not mean that the same level of performance will continue for subsequent years as it may have been subject to special intervention and circumstances, therefore a much better methodology in the rating of schools is evaluation in terms of trend and deviations against trend.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Stock Market SPX Strength is Deceptive / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Andre_Gratian

Current Position of the Market

SPX Long-term trend:  Severe correction underway

SPX Intermediate trend:  Potential rally top.

 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, April 03, 2016

The No Fresh Water Planet / Commodities / Water Sector

By: Richard_Mills

Our planet is 70 percent covered in ocean - 98% of the world's water is in the oceans. Which makes 98% of the world's water unfit for drinking, or irrigation.

Just 2% of the world's water is fresh. The vast majority of our fresh water, 1.64%, is in its frozen state and locked up in the polar ice caps, Greenland's ice sheet and glaciers. Once it melts its contaminated by seawater, either by melting directly into the oceans or running to the world's oceans through a stream or river.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Canadians Switch Out of Canadian Dollars Into U.S. Dollars Now!!... / Currencies / Canadian $

By: Clive_Maund

As a Brit I well understand the deep admiration the Canadians have for their powerful neighbors south of the border, even if it is not always expressed. The good news in this update is that now is the time to "put your money where your mouth is" when it comes to admiring the Yanks, by changing your Canadian dollars immediately into US dollars, the prime reason being that the Canadian looks set to drop after a big rally from mid-January, while the US dollar looks set to surprise by rallying away from the danger zone of the support around 93 on the dollar index.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Enough Americans Have Already Voted – Stock Market Chaos Is Coming! / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Chris_Vermeulen

Once the majority of Americans have made up their mind and voted it will be almost impossible to change the direction of the outcome and change their minds. Unfortunately, the majority has voted and are in agreement with the next major event that will catch most people off guard. While this may sound bad and negative, I feel it is an opportunity of a lifetime.

You may be thinking I’m talking about who will be the next president but that is not it. Although the same theory applies to that as well.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Trump’s First 100 Days As President / ElectionOracle / US Presidential Election 2016

By: Stephen_Lendman

Should a billionaire be entrusted to lead the country? Perhaps his only redeeming quality is he’d likely not start WW III.

Interviewed on April 2, he said he’d govern like he campaigns if elected president, a nontraditional Trumpian approach, he explained.

During the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days were historic, a unique post-electoral period. More on it below.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Will North Korea and Cuba Ever Be Wealthy? / Politics / Social Issues

By: MISES

Ryan W. McMaken writes: After years of claiming to embrace revolutionary Marxism, the Cuban state is, for reasons of necessity and pragmatism, moving toward becoming a more traditional authoritarian state. Even once Raul and Fidel Castro are dead, it's rather unlikely that the Cuban government will suddenly turn to a political system that leans heavily in favor of relatively free markets. As has been the case with China, the ruling class of Cuba will find ways to perpetuate itself and maintain political control while keeping for itself a substantial amount of the wealth produced by the labors of the common people. It will likely loosen up on its control of the economy because it recognizes that more-free economies are more productive than less-free economies. But, don't look for Cuba to become a haven for entrepreneurship any time soon.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

UEFA Champions League 2016 T-Shirts Quality Walkers Prizes Delivery 4 / Personal_Finance / Freebies and Comps

By: Adnaan_Walayat

It's our fourth delivery of prizes in the PEPSICo Walkers crisps UEFA Champions League easy to win promo. Today, for the first time we find out what the quality of T-Shirts is actually like. So find out in this video if the long wait has been worthwhile or not. The promotion is still running, so you have about 3 more weeks to win your own t-shirts, sharing bowls and footballs so make sure to check out our other videos giving tips on how to maximise wins.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Tollerance, Intollerance And Liberty / Politics / Social Issues

By: Raymond_Matison

Americans have a well-earned reputation for being tolerant.  This tolerance goes back to before the very foundation of our country.  The original immigrants to Britain’s American Colony often were people escaping some form of oppression in Europe, and thus were quite cognizant and very sensitive to its practice.  Landing in America, these early immigrants quickly became tolerant of each other and learned not to be oppressive to others themselves. 

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Gold Getting Stale? – Charts and COTs / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: Dan_Norcini

Notice on the very short term chart, a 2 hour run, gold has been in a steady decline since the middle of last month with rallies attracting selling at the key resistance levels noted on the chart.

Price is currently holding below $1212 – $1210.

Initial resistance begins near $1225 and extends higher towards $1228. Above that lies $1237-$1240.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

California Minimum Wage Hike History / Economics / Wages

By: Mike_Shedlock

California Governor Jerry Brown launched a Political Earthquake proposing a series of minimum wage hikes every year between now and 2022 when the minimum wage hits $15.

The Huffington post reports "The new law will boost paychecks for millions of California workers. More than 40% of California workers earn less than $15 dollars an hour."

Sunday, April 03, 2016

What New Economic Recovery? / Economics / US Economy

By: Chris_Vermeulen

The rise of the ‘dollar store business model’ caters to a disappearing ‘middle class’ who are incurring shrinking incomes. This has made ‘dollar stores’ prosper, in the last decade. Dollar stores, for most Americans, have carried an odd sort of stigma.  In the past, these stores were seen as shopping for the poor, only.  We are all now aware that many people who were in the once strong American ‘middle class’ were thrown off of the prosperity path and into ‘lower income’ brackets from business layoffs, downsizing, and salary reduction.  While regular product companies struggle the expanding ‘dollar stores’ have found a niche in this economic climate.  The shrinking ‘middle class’ means more customers for ‘dollar stores’.

Saturday, April 02, 2016

Gold And Silver – Qrtly, Monthly Charts. No Change In Trends / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: Michael_Noonan

“Nothing ever changes on Wall Street. Speculation is as old as the hills. What has happened before in the markets will happen again.” Jesse Livermore

Despite taking his life at the Sherry Netherland Hotel in 1940, at the age of 63, [he considered himself a failure], Livermore is revered by many as the consummate trader.
We often comment on the importance of rules, and our adherence to rules does not come from Livermore, but he always attributed his losses to the times when he failed to follow his rules.

Saturday, April 02, 2016

Stock Markets Still Looking for Interest Rate Clues / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Richard_Cox

By nearly all accounts, stock markets have had trouble gaining momentum over the last year.  The S&P 500 is now trading just 0.6% higher for the period -- and while this might seem modestly positive it does not say much for what is essentially a multi-year bull run in the equities space.  There are a few different schools arguing for why exactly this is happening but no matter which view you take, nearly every investor is looking for new clues in what is likely to happen in global interest rate changes.

Saturday, April 02, 2016

Manufacturing Improving.... Jobs Doing Well.... Stock Market Holds Well / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Jack_Steiman

The market day started with some nasty futures as the overbought, daily index charts were finally about to unwind some. That would have been great news. An hour before the market opened we got the much anticipated Jobs Report. Overall, it was in line, but it did little to nothing to help the market rally off the lows. The day started out with a gap down, and after being down as much as fifteen points on the S&P 500, we started to slowly, but surely, rally back up a bit, but remained in the red.

Saturday, April 02, 2016

Wall Street is Coo-Coo for CoCo Bonds - Learn why these new bonds are such risky instruments / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market

By: EWI

The co-editor of our monthly Elliott Wave Financial Forecast newsletter tells you about the emergence of the so-called CoCo bonds, one of the hottest new derivative-backed instruments on Wall Street.

Listen as Peter explains what differentiates them from regular bonds -- and why they're so risky to own.