Tuesday, September 08, 2015
When Stock Market Volatility Is Your Best Friend / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Marc Lichtenfeld writes: Most people who talked to me about the market last week were shaking their heads, trying to make sense of the extreme up-and-down moves. But a few smart investors simply shrugged their shoulders and said, “I don’t care. I’m selling the volatility, so it’s been great for me.”
What they mean is that they are selling options - calls and puts. And they’re not selling them to close positions. They’re starting new ones, but selling first and buying them back when they’re cheaper.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
One of the Best Opportunities When the Stock Market Recovers / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Stock Market Forecast / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
For some time now, I have been observing bearish “cracks” appearing within the stock markets. The speed of the market’s drop, during the month of August, came as no surprise to me.
The bear market rally ended last week, after it had a 50% retracement of its initial decline. By Friday, September 4th, 2015, the index was trying to hold on, so as to support that which was created by a critical short- term trend line that had already been violated. The DJIA weekly chart gives a good argument by expressing the view that a bear market may already have begun.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
The Most Important Geopolitical Trend of the Next Decade…Here’s How to Profit / Politics / GeoPolitics
By Nick Giambruno
The bloodbath was merciless.
In 1842, 16,500 British soldiers and civilians withdrew from Kabul, Afghanistan. Only one would survive.
It was the most humiliating military disaster in British history. The death toll sealed Afghanistan’s reputation as “the graveyard of empires.”
It was the desire for control of Central Asia that sucked the British Army into its Afghan disaster.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Muddling Through Shanghai Stock Market and Chinese Economy / Stock-Markets / Chinese Stock Market
“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.” – Sun Tzu
A couple of weeks ago I was complaining about 47,000 China reports clogging my e-mail. The number now feels like it is well into six figures (perhaps a slight exaggeration). Maybe my memory is going, but there wasn’t nearly as much China talk on the way up. Funny how that works.
Is China collapsing? I think parts of China are under severe pressure if not outright recession, and clearly the stock market is a disaster. Anyone who bought Shanghai or Shenzhen stocks on margin this year is probably on the brink.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
7 Reasons the Stocks Bear Market Has Just Begun / Stock-Markets / Stocks Bear Market
On March 10th 2009 the US stock market hit an intraday low and put in the now-famous “Haines bottom”--coined after my friend, the late great Mark Haines, who made one of the most prescient calls in market history. It should be noted by the time that fateful day arrived it was virtually impossible to find a single bull out of all the geniuses on Wall Street.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Crude Oil, Silver, Gold and Real Money / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
I’m not convinced!
- Supposedly crude oil prices will stay low for a long time and perhaps drop into the $20’s. The Internet is filled with reasons explaining why crude oil prices will drop. A few are:
- Saudi Arabia is a swing producer and will provide what the world needs, regardless of price, because Saudi Arabia needs the revenue and employment for its people.
- Iranian oil will soon hit the market and provide even more supply.
Tuesday, September 08, 2015
China Buys 16 Tons Gold In August – Dumps $94 Billion / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Given the strong demand fundamentals, particularly out of China, gold should go higher but as ever there is a risk of selling in the futures market leading to weakness in the short term as traders follow momentum and ignore fundamentals.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Silver and Deflation / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
How does silver perform during deflation? Which is better during a deflation – silver or gold? The answers will depend on quite a few things as well as what definition of deflation one uses.
If you look at monetary history, then you will find that we have moved from periods where mostly real or tangible assets like gold and silver acted as monetary claims on goods and services in the economy, to today where mostly credit or debt claims (fiat currencies like the US dollar) act as monetary claims on goods and services. Therefore, we have moved from a real asset-based monetary system to a debt-based monetary system.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Dangerous is The Best Way to Explain The Banking Stocks Index Now ... / Companies / Banking Stocks
The ($BKX) Banking Index did hold at its rising channel's support line last week. However there is concern for later because the support line was breached for two days before the Banking Index found its way back into the range.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
The Default Next Move For Crude Oil Price Is Downwards, And Here's Why / Commodities / Crude Oil
As traders, investors and pundits, we all like to think that what we do is akin to a science. We believe that by working harder and being smarter we can give ourselves an edge, that enough research will reveal to us the next move, either a long term trend or an intraday blip on a chart, and that we can profit from that knowledge. Usually, especially over longer time spans, we are correct in that assumption. Sometimes, however, no amount of fundamental or technical analysis will help.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Here's Your Insurance Against a $200 Trillion Debt Bubble Crash / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2015
MoneyMorning.comPeter Krauth writes: The world is awash in debt, and it's simply unsustainable. As worldwide debt levels keep setting new records, there's no chance anyone will ever be paid back.
Even "vampire squid" Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), with its tentacles deep into bond markets, thinks so.
The world's central banks now have an insurmountable dilemma: Raising interest rates will just increase the repayment burden. Keeping them low will only inflate the debt bubbles all over.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Europe's Best Real Estate Investments for 2016 / Housing-Market / European Housing
With the global stock markets currently in uncertain territory, many investors are once again turning toward bricks and mortar as a preferred place to put their money. The chaotic Chinese economy and ever-falling oil prices are two of the main factors making many other types of investment look particularly risky right now. However, the recovery in European property prices has been one of the major success stories of the aftermath of the global banking crisis, so savvy investors will be studying where to buy real estate in the coming year.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
UK Best Current Accounts - The End of ‘Free’ Banking? / Personal_Finance / UK Banking
This month marks the two-year anniversary of the Current Account Switch Guarantee, and while many consumers have already taken advantage and switched providers, greater momentum could be caused by incoming changes to the retail banking market.
Last month the CMA reported that of the 17% of customers who start looking to switch their current account, a staggering 86% don’t go on to switch. It is also estimated that the annual rate of switching stands at just 3%, and worryingly, 25% of switchers move their account without researching the market first.* Meanwhile, frequent overdraft users were found to be the least likely group of consumers to move, due to the hurdles of securing an overdraft facility with their new bank and the complexities of comparing account charges (something that is increasing in importance as average authorised overdraft usage fees have crept up from £4.59 to £6.74 in just two years).
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
EU Referendum - Assessing Britain's Ties to the Europe Union / ElectionOracle / EU_Referendum
Mark Fleming-Williams writes: At some point in the next two years, British voters will decide whether to remain a part of the European Union. This will be the first time Britons have been consulted on the subject since 1975, when 67 percent voted to stay in. If it does decide to leave, the United Kingdom will become the first country to leave the European Union since it was created as the European Community in 1957. The repercussions would be felt not just in Britain, but also across the Continent and indeed across the world. To predict the eventual result of the vote, it is first important to understand the factors that have kept the United Kingdom in the union this long.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Syrian Refugee Crisis to Result in UK Council and Social Housing Waiting Lists Freeze Catastrophe / Politics / Immigration
Whilst David Cameron plucks figures out the air such as for the relocation of 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next few years, the reality will probably be nearer 20 times that figure, 400,000 Syrian refugees as evidenced by David Cameron's other immigration promises to cut net immigration to the tens of thousands per year where instead each data release shows net migration soaring to a new record high, as evidenced by the most recent data of over 330,000 per year.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Can Big Cap Gold and Silver Stocks Go Any Lower ? / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2015
In this I’m going to take an indepth look at some the individual precious metals stocks so we can see where they’re at from a short to long term perspective. We’ll start by looking at some of the more important big cap PM stocks as the precious metals stock indexes can’t have a significant rally until this group is ready to run. Anything can happen in the very short term but the further you go out in time the less likely the big trend is going to change on a dime.
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Monday, September 07, 2015
U.S. Real Wealth Weaker than GDP Stats Show / Economics / Economic Statistics
US real gross domestic product (GDP) grew faster than initially thought in Q2. GDP expanded at a 3.7 percent annual rate instead of the 2.3 percent rate reported last month and 0.6 percent in Q1. Most experts, in response to this figure, are now arguing that the US economy is strengthening visibly.
This, coupled with a relatively stable price level, raises the likelihood that the economy is approaching the path of healthy economic growth with stable price inflation.
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Monday, September 07, 2015
The Stock Market Wants to Rally, Gold Bottoming / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
The SPX futures are rallying during this Labor Day Holiday. The chart below pretty much explains what I'm looking for this week. On the sentiment point, we have excessive bearishness: large specs short volatility, while the small specs are long volatility and high P/C ratios... this is fairly bullish, at least in the short term.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, September 07, 2015
If You Think That Was A Stock Market Crash…. / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Last week’s volatility to the downside was entirely predictable, as the first leg down during this ongoing market crash reached the correction stage of 11%. The technical bounce was a given, as the 30 year old HFT MBAs on Wall Street have been trained like rats to BTFD. In their lemming like minds, it has worked for the last six years of this Federal Reserve created “bull market”, so why wouldn’t it work now. Last week was their first lesson in why it doesn’t work during bear markets, and we’ve entered a bear market. John Hussman seems amused at the shallowness of the arguments by Wall Street shills and CNBC cheerleaders about the future of the stock market in his weekly letter. After this modest pullback from all-time highs, the S&P 500 is still overvalued by 92%:
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