Saturday, December 05, 2015
Strong U.S. Payroll Number +211,000 Assures December Interest Rate Hike / Economics / US Economy
Initial Reaction
Following last month's payroll surge comes a second strong month. The Bloomberg Consensus estimate was 190,000 jobs and the headline total was 211,000. The unemployment rate was steady to 5.0%, the lowest since April 2008. A rate hike in December is now assured.
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Saturday, December 05, 2015
Euro, Dollar, Buy the Rumor and Sell the News Alive in Forex Markets / Currencies / Forex Trading
ECB Disappoints
All those who continue to forget this trading maxim were royally punished on Thursday morning as the ECB could not match the trading enthusiasm built into the move in shorting the Euro and thus going long the US Dollar for the prior 7 weeks lead up into the ECB Monetary Policy Decision.
This is such a strong trading maxim to buy the rumor, and sell the actual news that it is the exception rather than the rule where an event over delivers. The best move is to take profits the day before the event as opposed to getting crushed on the news which happened today in the Euro and US Dollar forex trades. Literally the amount of crushing that some traders took this morning regarding giving up a month`s worth of profits in an hour is stomach churning.
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Saturday, December 05, 2015
Gold’s Artificial Price Lows / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Gold’s latest slide to new secular lows has amplified the hyper-bearish sentiment long plaguing it. More than ever, traders are universally convinced gold is doomed to drift lower indefinitely. But these extreme gold lows are not fundamentally righteous, they resulted from extreme record gold-futures shorting. As these risky leveraged bets must soon be covered, prices driven by them are artificial and unsustainable.
One of the greatest mistakes made in the markets is the common assumption that prevailing price levels are justified by fundamentals. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While prices do indeed gravitate towards levels supported by supply and demand over the long term, herd emotions drag them away in the short term. Popular greed and fear have vastly more influence on current prices than fundamentals.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Does GDP Drive the Gold Price? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
The gross domestic product (GDP) is the monetary value of all finished goods and services produced within a country in a specific time period. It is also the most common measure of a nation’s overall economic activity or the size of economy. More and more economists recognize the flawed character of GDP (for example, it includes only final goods and services; overstates the consumption; it assumes that government spending is productive; it treats imports as something negative; it excludes household work, and so on), but governments, central banks, financial analysts and investors still think it is possible to frame the whole economy in just one number. This is why the GDP growth is still closely followed, also in the gold market.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
SPX An Expanded Flat Correction at 61.8% / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Unless I am mistaken, we have just witnessed an Expanded Flat Wave [ii] just a point shy of a 61.8% retracement. The labeling would be too fine for the hourly chart, so I am simplifying it to a [i] – [ii] count. The reversal may take hold after the European close at 11:30 am.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
US Dollar Index Technical Outlook / Currencies / US Dollar
The US Dollar index has made marginal new highs which I believe will turn out to be a false break top. Let's take a top down approach beginning with the monthly chart.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Bill Gross: Fed is "Certainly Set to Go" / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Bill Gross of Janus Capital Management joined Bloomberg Radio and Television to react to today's jobs report.
Gross said the Federal Reserve is "certainly set to go…Fed is ready to go I think because of concerns on the real economy."
When asked if he lost money yesterday, Gross said: " Oh no, made money yesterday. I had lots of calls, sold lots of calls on five and 10-year German bunds, went the other way this time and so made a lot of money, making a lot of money today on those particular trades."
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Friday, December 04, 2015
How to Profit from the End of the Longest Running War in the Americas / Stock-Markets / Emerging Markets
By Nick Giambruno
Drug cartels. Kidnappings. Assassinations. A war for billions in cocaine profits. Leftist guerrillas looking for a piece of the action.
If you’ve seen a movie with this stuff in it, there’s a good chance it was set in Colombia.
Popular culture has depicted Colombia this way for decades. The media has pounded this image into the public’s consciousness. So it’s no surprise most people think of the country as a scary, dangerous place.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
China South Sea Martime Dispute, an Overture to World War III? / Politics / China US Conflict
By Doug Casey
It’s always been true, as Bourne said, that “war is the health of the State.” But it’s especially true when economic times get tough. That’s because governments like to blame their problems on outsiders; even an imagined foreign threat tends to unify opinions around those of the leaders. Since economies around the world are all weakening, and political leaders are all similar in essential mindset, there’s good reason to believe the trend towards World War III is accelerating.
Many politicians and pundits in the U.S. blame “those damn Chinese” for taking “our jobs” by filling Walmart with tons of cheap goods, and the swarthy ragheads for making the price of oil too high (usually, but now too low).
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Dovish ECB Disappoints – Gold Rises, Stocks and Bonds Fall Globally, Euro Surges / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
‘Super Mario’, the European Central Bank’s monetary magician, disappointed markets yesterday as continuing and unprecedented monetary easing failed to prevent a sharp sell-off in stock and bond markets which has continued today.
There are sharp losses on financial markets after the ECB’s President’s – nicknamed ‘Super Mario’ and more recently ‘Magic Mario’ – latest radical measures stopped well short of market expectations and traders desperation for more cheap money and deepening ultra loose monetary policies.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Stock Market and the FOMC Meeting / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
I expect the Fed is going to make a big effort to push the market back up in time for the FOMC meeting on the 16th, but the forces trying to pull stocks down right now are massive. There are times when its just best to sit on the sidelines.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Relative Strength in Gold Stocks Portends to Rebound / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2015
A few weeks ago we warned that the gold miners were at risk of a technical breakdown. They struggled to rebound at support while Gold was breaking to a new low. Gold continued to decline but the miners held support and stabilized. Gold traded as low as $1045 on Thursday but the miners continued to diverge in a positive fashion. The recent relative strength from the gold miners particularly in the face of new lows in Gold, coupled with the oversold condition of the metals suggests a sector rebound is developing.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Does Draghi's Coup Secure Yellen's Interest Rate Liftoff? / Interest-Rates / ECB Interest Rates
To some, the ECB has underdelivered today by not only cutting rates by a smaller than expected 0.10 bp in the deposit rate to -0.3% from -0.2% (vs exp -0.4%) but also disappointed most market players by only extending the duration of QE to an additional 6 months and not adding to the monthly $60 bn QE. The ECB's decision to opt for QE extension rather than QE expansion reflects the broad signs of improvement in German growth business surveys. Germany's IFO and various Eurozone PMIs and confidence surveys have hit 17 to 52-month highs.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Why Is The U.S. Reluctant To Bomb ISIS Oil Fields? / Politics / Crude Oil
There has been some revealing new information coming out recently regarding the strategy against ISIS. One aspect many find troubling is the apparent failure of U.S. and coalition forces to sufficiently target and destroy oil infrastructure located in ISIS territory, which accounts for a significant portion of the terror group's annual income. The argument goes, if we want to impact their operations, we should target their primary sources of income, and choke off their operational funds. So, why does ISIS oil infrastructure still stand? Is this the result of an intelligence failure? Negligence? Or, is there a more purposeful reason?Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, December 04, 2015
Financial Markets Had Been Obedient, Until Today / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2015
Euro 50 Flips Draghi the Bird, S&P 500 Fails at a Key Parameter, Semi’s are Fundamentally Bearish and Gold Has a Sentiment Washout Within its Bear Market
Markets Had Been Obedient, Until Today
Despite Janet Yellen’s protests to the contrary, the 7 year long asset market bailout (ZIRP + QE’s 1, 2 & 3 with a side of Operation Twist) has served to further enrich formerly troubled asset holders and provide a handy wealth effect for regular 401k holders to boot.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
The “Real Stuff” Economy Is Falling Apart / Economics / US Economy
Each month one or two high-profile government reports show the US is growing, adding jobs and generally recovering from the Great Recession. But it’s not clear how that can be, when the part of the economy that makes and moves real things keeps shrinking. Here’s a chart, published recently by Zero Hedge, showing that US manufacturing has been contracting for the past year:
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Friday, December 04, 2015
U.S. Dollar and Bonds Sink as ECB Cuts Rates to -0.3%, Pledging More QE Until March 2017 / Interest-Rates / ECB Interest Rates
ECB president Mario Draghi's announcement today regarding more QE fell far short of the sky-high expectations of market participants.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Silver: We NEED it! / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
The answer to many questions often depends upon perspective, whether the questions are; should I buy silver, is the S&P 500 expensive, is huge and unpayable debt a problem, is another World War a bad idea, will eating potato chips and candy bars actually damage my health, and are Republicrats as useless and corrupt as they appear?
Many people have suggested that silver prices are hopeless and silver will never go up. This is an overly emotional perspective caused by 4.5 years of declining silver prices and negative sentiment. Consistent with this “hopeless” assessment are:
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Friday, December 04, 2015
Invest Like a Fund Manager: Tips from the Silver Summit / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Gold bars? ETFs? Junior miners? Royalty streams? Majors with dividends? How is an investor to determine the best way to leverage the upside of a beaten up metals market? The Gold Report hosted a standing-room-only fund manager panel at the Silver Summit in San Francisco featuring insights from three very different points of view. Axel Merk, president and CIO of Merk Investments, focuses on gold and currency investing. Robert Mullin is co-founder of Real Assets Equity Income Funds and focuses largely on producing mining companies. Greg Orrell is the president and portfolio manager of the OCM Gold Fund and invests across all sectors of the precious metals industry, including junior producers and exploration and development companies. All three see unique opportunities right now for creating a portfolio that captures a renewed focus from mining executives on shareholder interests.
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Friday, December 04, 2015
How Stocks Bull Markets End / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By Jared Dillian
Many people think that they ring a bell at the top of a bull market. Ding-a-ling-a-ling.
That is indeed often the case. The bell was rung in 2000 at the top of the dot-com bubble—I like to think it was 3Com spinning off Palm that broke its back.
But sometimes there is no bell, no catalyst, no story to tell. A bull market becomes a bear market, and it happens just like that.
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