Friday, January 29, 2016

Stock Market Volatility Index Funny Business / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Barry_M_Ferguson

The volatility index, or the VIX, is commonly thought to be an index that gauges index volatility. Actually, the VIX is an index that gauges the expense of put options. Put options of course are designed to gain advantage when the underlying asset declines in price. In this case, the VIX is a measure of the expense of buying put options on the S&P 500 index. Normally, prices are set by buyers and sellers. More buyers than sellers generally leads to higher prices and fewer buyers than sellers generally leads to lower prices. Normally.

Friday, January 29, 2016

US Mint Gold Bullion Coin Sales / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: Zeal_LLC

Recent years have seen countless claims that gold and silver prices have to head far lower, implying demand is low or supply is high.  But the actual data continues to prove this false, showing precious-metals bearishness is rooted in sentiment and not fundamentals.  One fascinating microcosm of gold and silver demand comes in the form of the US Mint’s sales of its popular American Eagle bullion coins.

When American investors buy physical gold and silver bullion, it’s often in the form of these American Eagle 1-ounce coins.  They have a really interesting history.  Back in the early 1980s, foreign national gold coins led by South Africa’s famous Krugerrand were soaring in popularity.  The US Congress didn’t want the States to be left out of the prestigious national-gold-coin business, so it finally acted in 1985.

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Fed’s Normalization and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

The Fed hike is not the end of the world. The U.S. economy experienced many tightening cycles. Actually, many analysts are citing past rate hike environments as a guide to the future. However, three things make this tightening cycle (if there are more hikes at all) unique. First, the U.S. central bank increased interest rates when the economy is actually decelerating and the manufacturing sector is in a recession. This makes new hikes less probable, while increasing the odds for the U.S. recession in the new year. Both effects are fundamentally positive for the gold market.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Be Prepared for Stock Market Insanity / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

SPX overshot its mid-cycle resistance, which is not unusual. The retracement lasted exactly 51.6 hours (12 X 4.3), which was longer than I had expected. The retracement amount was 116.43 points, which amounted to a 43.2% bounce from the low.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Sugar Commodity Trading Sweet Tooth Pay Day! / Commodities / Agricultural Commodities

By: Chris_Vermeulen

On Wednesday Jan 27^th I wrote an article that gave you a picture perfect trade setup. The trade is on sugar or the SGG sugar ETF. As of this writing sugar is now over 10% in our favor from the original entry and trading at short term support.

This is a critical level to lock in partial profits and move your stop in the money for the balance of the trade to be safe. I just want to keep following up with this trade as many followers are in this trade with me.

Friday, January 29, 2016

BEA Estimates U.S. Economy 4th Quarter 2015 GDP Growth at 0.69% / Economics / US Economy

By: CMI

In their first "Preliminary" estimate of the US GDP for the fourth quarter of 2015, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the economy was growing at a +0.69% annualized rate, down -1.30% from the third quarter.

All of the key line items in this report showed meaningful deterioration relative to the third quarter. The reported growth in consumer spending was less than half of that recorded during the prior quarter. The growth in fixed investments nearly disappeared, as did growth in governmental spending. Exports continued to crater, showing outright contraction.

Friday, January 29, 2016

GBP-USD Stuck Between Bulls And Bears / Currencies / British Pound

By: Gregor_Horvat

Correction completed or no? That's the question I am wondering while looking at GBPUSD. Firstly I assumed that we will see higher corrective for blue wave 4-cricled, because of the degree that I am tracking on a daily chart. I thought we may even see 1.4560 level, but todays decline put some doubt in that view. That said, I prepared two wave counts now, and will be ready to go with the bearish one if we get a daily close beneath 1.4172. Then I would look for a retest of 1.4080 early in February. But until then wave four can still reach higher levels with sub-wave C) if consider possible flat now in wave B). This is now time for patience, as battle between bulls and bears appears undecided.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Market Friendly BoJ Action Means more Unfriendly CNY Devaluation / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2016

By: Ashraf_Laidi

The BoJ's decision to cut the interest rate on current account balances to -0.10% highlights the beginning of the end of Japan's asset purchase program due to insufficient bonds held by banks, pension funds and insurance companies.

The fact that the BoJ voted 5-4 in favour of negative rates and 8-1 to keep monthly assets purchases unchanged exposes the controversial nature of the decision to re-enter negative rates and the unfeasibility of adding fresh QE.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Xerox - CEO Future Role, Icahn's Involvement, and Company's Debt / Companies / Corporate News

By: Bloomberg

Xerox Chairman & CEO Ursula Burns spoke with Stephanie Ruhle and David Westin on Bloomberg TV's "Bloomberg <GO>" to discuss that in an agreement with investor Carl Icahn, Xerox will split into two publicly traded companies.

Fortunately when we did speak to him, as you know he's a large holder of our shares, he agreed with the outcome we reached."

On Icahn's involvement going forward, Burns added: "On a go-forward basis he will be involved from a perspective when the company separates into two; he will have some governance input into the services business. Will not be engaged with the document technology business or with current Xerox business at all."

Friday, January 29, 2016

Stock Market Pop-n-Drop / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

Good Morning!

What a night in the futures and forex markets! The Premarket is up, but this is to be expected in the final ramp of Wave (v) of [c] within a Broadening formation. So the Premarket is higher, but still under the previous high. Whether it makes a higher point 5 in the 5-point reversal is yet to be known. Either way, the reversal may be abrupt and strong. It is likely that the reversal into Wave 3 may begin by the end of the day.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Seven Years of Monetary Quackery; Can the Fed Admit it Got it Wrong? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank

By: Mike_Whitney

America’s richest investors are betting trillions of dollars that the US economy will stay lousy for years to come.

Who are these wealthy investors?

Bondholders. And their views on the state of the economy are reflected in the yields on long-term US Treasuries. At present, the yields on long-term debt are very low which means that investors think the economy will continue to underperform while inflation remains in check.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Japan Just Lit the Fuse on a $9 Trillion Debt Implosion / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2016

By: Graham_Summers

Last night the Bank of Japan implemented Negative Interest Rate Policy, or NIRP.

It is the second Central Bank to do so. The European Central Bank or ECB first went to NIRP in June 2014.

Thus, between Japan and Europe, over 20% of the world’s GDP is being managed by a Central Bank with NIRP.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Steve Forbes Speaks Out on the Presidential Race, Fed Recklessness, and Gold / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2016

By: MoneyMetals

Forbes Pulls No Punches in Exclusive Interview with Money Metals Exchange

Mike Gleason, Director, Money Metals Exchange: It is my great privilege to welcome Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine, CEO of Forbes, Inc. to our Money Metals Exchange podcast.  Steve is also author of many fabulous books, including Flat Tax Revolution, How Capitalism Will Save Us, and his latest work, Reviving America: How Repealing Obamacare, Replacing the Tax Code and Reforming the Fed Will Restore Hope and Prosperity. He's also a two-time Presidential candidate, having run in the Republican primaries in both 1996 and 2000. It's a tremendous honor to have him with us today. Mr. Forbes, thank you so much for joining us and welcome.

Friday, January 29, 2016

US Stock Market & the Gold Sector Analysis / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2016

By: Gary_Tanashian

To review our stance, which is years along now, the gold sector is not going anywhere until it becomes widely accepted that developed stock markets, including and especially those in the US, are in bear cycles.  We have also drawn analogies to the Q4 2008 event that took place in what felt like a nanosecond compared to today’s long, drawn out process.  For this reason, a better ‘comp’ has been the 1999 to 2001 time frame.  That was a process as well.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Gold and Silver Price Manipulation: Can It Be Empirically Verified? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016

By: GoldCore

Dr Brian Lucey, Dr Jonathan Batten and Dr Maurice Peat have just published some interesting research looking at the thorny issue of whether there is manipulation of gold and silver prices.

Friday, January 29, 2016

USDJPY: "Diving" For Opportunity / Currencies / Forex Trading

By: EWI

Learn how protective stops keep you on the right side the trend

On a recent vacation to the Yucatan, my friend decided to get certified in scuba diving.

I, on the other hand, prefer breathing my air above water! But I did tag along with her to one of the classes, anyway. She learned how to handle and interpret all the various diver gauges: gas pressure, submersive pressure, depth, and on.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Janet Yellen "Peddling Fiction" on a Worsening Economy... Doesn’t Raise Rates and Downgrades Outlook / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates

By: Jeff_Berwick

We have made some very bold claims in the past.  Since 2010, to many jears, we said that the Federal Reserve would never raise rates significantly again.  Most laughed.  They said that surely this crazy, emergency 0% interest rate policy was only temporary.  Five long years passed, and even a Fed Chairman later, before finally, after seven years-to-the-day, on December 16th, Janet Yellen took the bold move to raise rates 0.25%.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Economic Headwinds: Big Players, Regime Uncertainty and the Misery Index / Economics / Global Economy

By: Steve_H_Hanke

Before we delve into the economic prospects for 2016, let’s take a look at the economies in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East/Africa to see how they fared in the 2014-15 period. A clear metric for doing this is the misery index. For any country, a misery index score is simply the sum of the unemployment, inflation, and bank lending rates, minus the percentage change in real GDP per capita. A higher misery index score reflects higher levels of “misery.”

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Stock Market Gloom and Doom / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016

By: Stephen_Lendman

Sharply lower global equity markets since last August reflect years of Fed-led central banks’ money printing madness, running headlong into economic contraction and instability.

China when thriving is a key engine of world economic growth, a depressant when declining. Official numbers conceal how much, at best a small fraction of its earlier annual double-digit increases.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

The Fed Passes the Buck: Blame Oil and China / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank

By: MISES

C. Jay Engel writes: There are a handful of themes out there on recent market action that are either totally wrong or otherwise highly misleading. For instance, regarding the recent calamity in the capital markets, one especially apparent dichotomy has presented itself as offering two choices as to what, exactly, is causing the painful turbulence.