Sunday, December 20, 2015

The Natural Gas Trading Play / Commodities / Natural Gas

By: EconMatters

Bearish Sentiment

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Cheap Christmas Lights Review (B&M Stores), What to Expect - Video / ConsumerWatch / Reviews

By: Anika_Walayat

This is a review of cheap outdoor Christmas lights such as by B&M Stores (Diamond Berry and similar), these lights are made exclusively for B&M Stores comprising 80 multi-coloured LED bulbs, of what use you can expect over 2 Christmas.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Today’s Mainstream Media Often Pandering to Bias and Ignorance / Politics / Mainstream Media

By: Walter_Brasch

The Texas board of education didn’t find anything wrong with a world geography textbook that said slaves from Africa were workers, but that immigrants from northern Europe were indentured servants.

This is the same school board that five years ago demanded that textbooks emphasize that slavery was only a side issue to the cause of the civil war, and that Republican achievements be emphasized in political science and civics textbooks.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Operation Northwoods, CIA Terrorism False Flags and Media Propaganda / Politics / Conspiracy Theory

By: James_Quinn

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

“In many nations, rational people end up believing crazy things, including (false) conspiracy theories. Those crazy thoughts can lead to violence, including terrorism. Many terrorist acts have been fueled by false conspiracy theories, and there is a good argument that some such acts would not have occurred in the absence of such theories. The key point—and, in a way, the most puzzling and disturbing one—is that the crazy thoughts are often held by people who are not crazy at all.”

Cass Sunstein- White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Gold And Silver - Physical Precious Metals Are A 'Gift' At Current Levels / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015

By: Michael_Noonan

It really matters little what the charts are saying about the paper futures for gold and silver here, which we will get to shortly. The focus needs to be kept on a few facts that are inescapably true: fiat currencies throughout the history on this planet have always, always failed, without exception, 100% of the time. There are few situations for which such a statement of guaranteed [failed] performance can be made.

It is any different this time? Yes and no. No, because all fiats have failed, plain and simple. Yes, because the extent to which there is no reasonable reality in the relationship between paper and physical has never occurred to the current degree, ever.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Banking Stocks - Why Not to "Bank" on It / Companies / Banking Stocks

By: EWI

Two charts, one message

Editor's note: You'll find a text version of this story below the video.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Gold Stocks Remain in Position to Rebound / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2015

By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne

The Fed rate hike has come and gone while the precious metals sector has continued to whipsaw traders day after day. The initial reaction was very positive. However, that completely reversed course on Thursday with Gold threatening to move to a new low and gold miners threatening to test recent support. Friday's strength continued the whipsaw pattern. In any event, the evidence continues to argue in favor of a rebound for the miners into Q1 2016.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

U.S. Fed Mission Accomplished / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates

By: Peter_Schiff

On May 1, 2003 on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln then President George W. Bush, after becoming the first U.S. president to land on an aircraft carrier in a fixed wing aircraft (in a dashing olive drab flight suit), declared underneath an enormous "Mission Accomplished" banner that "major combat operations" in Iraq had been concluded, that regime change had been effected, and that America had prevailed in its mission to transform the Middle East. 13 years later, after years of additional combat operations in Iraq, and a Middle East that is spiraling out of control and increasingly disdainful of America's influence, we look back at the "Mission Accomplished" event as the epitome of false confidence and premature celebration.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Stock Market Flash Crash Time? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

This is getting uncomfortably close to a meltdown, despite the late hour. If it continues to decline into the close, options sellers will be caught wrong-footed and will have to continue to sell on Monday.

Flash Crash time?

Friday, December 18, 2015

Stock Market Figures Out Fed No Longer Has Its Back / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015

By: John_Rubino

US stocks soared while the Fed was meeting to raise interest rates this week — though it’s not clear why that should be so since monetary tightening isn’t generally a good thing for stock prices.

In any event, it didn’t last. Over the past 48 hours the Dow is down more than 3%, with many, many individual stocks down far more.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Is the Stock Market "Courting Catastrophe?" / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

On the surface, it seems like a “normal” trading day in the SPX.  It is not.  The chart gives it away by showing the daily volume already at the to of its daily range and it’s not yet 1:00 pm.

Back in 2006 I had the privilege of talking with Andrew Smithers, who was part of the investigation team to determine what caused the Crash in 1987.  He had been interviewed by Barrons Magazine in a now famous article entitled, “Courting Catastrophe.” 

Friday, December 18, 2015

The Velocity of the American Consumer / Economics / US Economy

By: Raul_I_Meijer

I was reading something yesterday by my highly esteemed fellow writer Charles Hugh Smith that had me first puzzled and then thinking ‘I don’t think so’, in the same vein as Mark Twain’s recently over-quoted quote:

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

I was thinking that was the case with Charles’ article. I was sure it just ain’t so. As for Twain, I’m more partial to another quote of his these days (though it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic:

Friday, December 18, 2015

U.S. Yield Curve and Spreads: Fed's Real Policy Error in Pictures; What's Next? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates

By: Mike_Shedlock

Inquiring minds may be interested in a detailed look at the yield curve and spreads between various durations following the Fed's Wednesday rate hike. Let's start with a long-term chart from 1996 to 2015.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Post ZIRP Stock Market and Gold Era / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015

By: Zeal_LLC

The Federal Reserve finally mustered the courage to end its radical zero-interest-rate-policy experiment this week.  Its quarter-point rate hike announced on the seventh anniversary of ZIRP kicks off the long road to normalization.  This leaves the stock markets and gold in unprecedented uncharted territory.  The Fed has never before attempted to exit ZIRP, let alone in the midst of such extremely distorted markets.

The Fed’s ZIRP saga symmetrically ended 7 years to the day after it began way back in mid-December 2008.  That was just after the dark heart of that year’s once-in-a-century stock panic, which struck terror into the Bernanke Fed.  The benchmark S&P 500 broad-market stock index (SPX) had plummeted 30.0% in a single month in October, and then plunged another 11.4% from those brutal lows in the subsequent month.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Stock Market Something Strange is Going On / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

It appears that the data feed to all the websites from the stock exchanges is having issues. StockCharts, Bloomberg and ForexPros appear to be in limbo. As far as I can tell, this is accurate, but who knows what goes on when the system is “off?”

This may be a way to discourage trades, since one can hardly know if he/she is getting an accurate quote. There is no report from ZeroHedge on this issue, which I find strange.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Spread of Islamophobia and the Upsurge of Ultra-Fascism to Contain and Counter Arabization and Islamization of the West / Politics / Social Issues

By: Dr_R_M_Mathew

The World, especially the West is under the grip of Islamophobia consequent on the onslaught of the western culture, democratic values, open society and women empowerment by the new brand of Radicle Islam and above all Islamic Terror Attacks. Radical Islam or Islamism ultimately aims at Arabization, more specifically Primitive Arab Tribalization of the West and the Rest of the World.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Do Inflation Indicators Drive the Prices of Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

Alongside the GDP and labor market’s strength, inflation rate is the most important macroeconomic indicator – since the Fed promotes full employment and price stability. The price stability is measured as the inflation rate, so inflation reports are closely watched by the U.S. central bank and investors. In the August Market Overview, we showed that gold is not always an inflation hedge. At that time, we focused on the Consumer Price Index, which is not the only measure of inflation. The others are the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCEPI) and the Producer Price Index (PPI).

Friday, December 18, 2015

Cineworld Star Wars the Force Awakens NOT for Tesco Clubcard Voucher Customers / ConsumerWatch / Shopping

By: Sami_Walayat

Star Wars the Force Awakes with near unanimously good reviews looks set to become one of the biggest movie hits of all time, and so is encouraging many less frequent cinema goers to pay a visit to their local cinema's such as Cineworld, preferably to watch the movie on the biggest IMAX screens in 3d for the full Star Wars effect.

Friday, December 18, 2015

SPX Defending 2000 Today / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

Good Morning!

I spent some time reviewing my Cycles chart to verify its accuracy. You may recall that I had suggested about two weeks ago that December 9 would be the “ideal day” for a Master Cycle low (258 days). Instead, it may have fallen on Monday, December 14, at 11:39 am. You might say that it was 4.3 calendar days from the average length of time, on day 263. I don’t have the exact figure any more, but I had done a study that showed that over 90% of all Cycle bottoms happen within 4.3 days of their normal date.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Data, Charts, History Show Rising Interest Rates Good For Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015

By: GoldCore

Gold fell to the lowest level in dollar terms since 2009 yesterday after the Fed’s “historic” 25 basis point interest rate rise on Wednesday. The rate hike has been heralded as the “end of cheap money.” This may or may not be the case but what is more important for precious metal buyers is the impact of potential rising rates on gold prices.