Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Financial Success Formula Failure / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2019
By: Patrick_Watson
The US economy grew at a 2.1% annualized pace in the second quarter, according to data released last week. That was better than economists expected but hardly impressive.
Even President Trump recognized this, tweeting the growth rate was “not bad considering we have the very heavy weight of the Federal Reserve anchor wrapped around our neck.”
That’s the same Federal Reserve of which Trump himself appointed the chair and a majority of board members. But I guess he has to blame somebody.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
How to Test Your Car Alternator with a Multimeter / Personal_Finance / Motoring
By: HGR
Here's how to test your car's alternator using a multimeter to see if it needs replacing or not. Diagnosing Alternator Problems. Learn how to test an alternator with a Multimeter. Does your car not start, do you have dim headlights or interior lights, does the starter sound weak when start the engine, or does your car die sitting overnight? This video will show you a few ways to test your alternator to see if it is bad, is going bad or is good. A good alternator will show a charge at around 14.2-14.7v while the car is running and under an electrical load it wont drop below 13v.
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Tuesday, August 13, 2019
London Under Attack! Victoria Embankment Gardens Statues and Monuments / Politics / Travel & Holidays
By: Anika_Walayat
If your visiting London then your likely going to visit the Embankment gardens whether your aware of them or not, given that they are situated just next to the house of parliaments and surrounded by several prominent buildings such as New Scotland Yard.
Victoria Embankment Gardens are part of the chain of open spaces along Victoria Embankment opened in 1865. The compact park features various statues including that of John Stuart Mill, Lady Henry Somerset statue of girl with begging bowl, William Howard Forster statue, and a memorial to the poet Robert Burns amongst many others. Unfortunately as is the case for many statues, the are under permanent attack from pigeons! And tend to be covered in acidic pigeon poop as this video illustrates.
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Monday, August 12, 2019
More Stock Market Weakness Ahead / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Andre_Gratian
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend – Finallong-term phase on the way? How much longer, is the question.
Intermediate trend – We have started a correction of intermediate nature.
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 discusses the course of longer market trends.
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Monday, August 12, 2019
I Told You The Stock Market Will Get Wild - Prepare To Be Whipsawed Again / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Avi_Gilburt
The Fed. The China trade deal. The House of Representatives impeachment proceedings. The Iranian aggression. North Korea firing missiles. Slowing growth in the world economy. As you can see, there are many issues worrying investors today. And, as the market moves up and down through these large gyrations these last two weeks, one excuse is paraded out after another.
When the market drops, it is supposedly because of “fears about the trade deal.” When the market rallies, I see headlines stating “the market rallies on lowered trade fears.” Sadly, this is the best the media and pundits can do. They really have no clue what is happening to the market.
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Monday, August 12, 2019
Global Central Banks Move To Keep The Party Rolling Onward / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
By: Chris_Vermeulen
The recent news that the US Fed, China and many of the global central banks are continuing to make efforts to lower rates and spark further consumer spending and economic activity is reminiscent of the late 2010~2013 global economic recovery efforts. This was a time when the economy was much slower than current levels and when central banks were doing everything possible to attempt to raise consumer and business activity related to capital.
The world’s governments and banks operate on a very simple premise – transactions and economic activity must continue to operate within a fairly standard range of consistency in order for tax revenues and transactional fees to drive profits/income. If extended periods of economic contraction persist, the capacity to function within standard operating parameters diminishes very quickly for these institutions. A -5% to -10% contraction in asset values, transactional business, tax revenues and/or consumer activity over an extended period of time could result in a catastrophic set of events taking place.
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Monday, August 12, 2019
U.S. Currency Wars With China—Past And Present / Currencies / Currency War
By: Steve_H_Hanke
In a purely political move, the Trump administration (read: the U.S. Treasury) has branded China as a currency manipulator. This is an act of war. After President Trump announced that even more tariffs would be imposed on China, the markets took the value of the Chinese yuan down a notch or two. So, who was “manipulating” the yuan, Beijing or Washington? Well, it looks like Washington is engaging in yet another Asian currency war.
As it turns out, the United States has a long history of waging currency wars in Asia. We all know the sad case of Japan. The U.S. claimed that unfair Japanese trading practices were ballooning its bilateral trade deficit with Japan. To “correct” the so-called problem, the U.S. demanded that Japan adopt an ever-appreciating yen policy. The Japanese complied and the yen appreciated against the greenback from 360 in 1971 to 80 in 1995 (and 106, today). But, this didn't close the U.S. trade deficit with Japan. Indeed, Japan's contribution to the overall U.S. trade deficit reached almost 60% in 1991. And, if that wasn't enough, the yen's appreciation pushed Japan's economy into a deflationary quagmire.
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Monday, August 12, 2019
Will Gold Continue to Outperform Silver? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Submissions
Gold Strength Dominates the MarketsThe recent rally in Gold has been hard to ignore. The yellow metal is certainly showing a lot of strength. But unlike prior rallies, the current one stands out in several ways.
For starters, Gold is trading at record levels against four of the seven major currencies. Looking at just spot Gold against the dollar does not represent just how strong Gold is at the moment. But not only that, Gold is rallying without the common correlations that we have seen in the past. Specifically, equities are not really under a whole lot of pressure at the moment. Neither is the dollar. In fact, the greenback just broke to a fresh high in the past few weeks.
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Monday, August 12, 2019
All Eyes On Copper / Commodities / Copper
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Copper is a fairly strong measure of the strength and capacity of the global economy and global manufacturing. Right now, Copper has been under quite a bit of pricing pressure and has fallen from levels above $4.50 (near 2011) to levels near $2.55. Most recently, Copper has rotated higher to levels near $3.25 after President Trump was elected on November 2016, yet has recently fallen as trade and global economic concerns become more intense.
This should be viewed as a strong warning sign that institutional traders and investors are very concerned that the future economic and manufacturing activities throughout the world are continuing to contract. Copper is used in various forms throughout all types of manufacturing and consumer products, such as computers, building & infrastructure, electronics, chemical & medical use as well as automobile and aircraft manufacturing. It makes sense that copper prices would be a leading indicator for much of the global economy and relate to economic output and capacity.
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Monday, August 12, 2019
History of Yield Curve Inversions and Gold / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The inversion of the yield curve is of crucial importance as it has historically been one of the most reliable recessionary gauges. Consequently, we invite you to read our today’s article about the history of the yield curve inversions and find out whether the recession is coming, and what does it mean for the gold market.
We keep our promises. In the previous edition of the Market Overview, we promised our Readers to “dig even deeper into the predictive power of the yield curve”. As a refresher, please take a look at the chart below. It shows the U.S. Treasury yield curve, or actually not the whole curve, but the spread between 10-year and 3-month government bonds. As one can see, that difference is still negative (as of July 19). It means that the yield curve remains inverted (on a daily basis) since May 2019 (we abstract from the short-lived dip in March 2019).
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Monday, August 12, 2019
Precious Metals Soar on Falling Yields, Currency Turmoil / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: MoneyMetals
What a wild week it’s been for investors.
The threat of global trade wars and currency wars sparked big swings across all major asset classes. Bond yields dove toward historic lows. Stocks plunged earlier in the week before rebounding sharply by Thursday. And precious metals rode a huge safe-haven wave higher.
Gold prices eclipsed the $1,500 level on Wednesday for the first time in over six years. Meanwhile, silver pushed above $17 an ounce to record a one-year high. Both metals are up over 4% for the week.
The money metals are becoming increasingly attractive as President Donald Trump ramps up his battles against China abroad and the Federal Reserve at home.
Monday, August 12, 2019
Why GraphQL? The Benefits Explained / Companies / Internet
By: Sumeet_Manhas
GraphQL is a query language that was created in 2012 by Facebook. It aims to provide people with an alternative solution to the conventional REST API architecture. At its core, GraphQL offers a syntax that describes how data should be asked for, i.e. a Schema. GraphQL operates by creating a single endpoint that has the responsibility of accepting queries, making it database agnostic. This is as opposed to having a reliance on the approach REST API follows, which involves there being different endpoints for each service. In this blog post, we are going to give you a further insight into GraphQL by explaining the advantages.
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Sunday, August 11, 2019
Is the Stock Market Making a V-shaped Recovery? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Troy_Bombardia
The U.S. stock market continues to rally. V-shaped rallies are uncommon, but not impossible. Today’s headlines:
- V-shaped bounce
- Volatility is falling
- % of stocks above their 50 dma is rising
- AAII sentiment crashed
- NAAIM sentiment crashed
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Precious Metals and Stocks VIX Are About To Pull A “Crazy Ivan” / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2019
By: Chris_Vermeulen
We’re borrowing a term from the movie Red October (source) that describes an unusual change of direction for a Russian submarine with the intent to seek out enemies and unknown targets – called a “Crazy Ivan”. We are using this term because we believe the markets are about to pull a very unusual “Crazy Ivan” move of their own – reverting to unknown price levels while the US/Global markets attempt to seek out risk, support, resistance and other unknown “revaluation” targets in the process.
Our belief is that a key cycle date, August 19, 2019, will be the start of a breakdown in the US markets that aligns with some outside type of catalyst event. It could be that foreign central banks issue some news or warning at that time or it could be that Asia/China issue some type of catalyst to the event. We don’t know what the catalyst will be but we can guess that it will be related to geopolitics or the global economy/credit/debt issues. God forbid it to be some type of war or human crisis event – we really don’t need that right now.
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Sunday, August 11, 2019
Social Media Civil War / Politics / Social Media
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The US government has to come up with very very strong legislation for social media, and it has to do that very soon. Because if it doesn’t, it risks those same social media inciting a civil war (that’s no hyperbole, that is real) on American soil.
And beyond as well, but as Donald Trump said about European efforts to curtail Twitter, Facebook et al’s activities, they’re American companies and hence America’s responsibility. Well, cool, but that means you have to do your job, and you ain’t doing it. Those EU efforts by the way were all about financial issues, tax paying etc., not inciting civil wars or being undemocratic. In short, Brussels doesn’t get it yet either.
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Sunday, August 11, 2019
Gold and the Bond Yield Continuum / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Gary_Tanashian
Have you heard the news? US Treasury bonds are sky rocketing as it turns out there is no inflation amid a global central bank NIRP-a-thon and race to the currency bottom. Going the other way, our 30yr Treasury yield Continuum is burrowing southward.
If you check out yesterday’s post you’ll see proof that the 2018 NFTRH view that people should tune out the bond experts instructing BOND BEAR MARKET!! was 100% on target.
But today the din is coming from the opposite pole. Everywhere you look on the financial websites it’s now about tanking yields, decelerating growth, trade war damage and deflation. Here is the 30 year bond yield (TYX), which is front and center in this hysteria (click the charts below for the clearest view). That is one impulsive looking drop.
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Sunday, August 11, 2019
Traders: Which Markets Should You Trade? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2019
By: Submissions
As technology advances and trading innovation continues, many traders want to diversify their investments. The prospect of making more profits have led many into trading markets they never thought possible. Although traders are continually seeking better markets and improved opportunities to explore, not many are in the know of the types of trading instruments available in this digital age. Surprisingly, traders are not the only ones looking to improve their chances of earning more. Even seemingly different markets are now attempting to steal each other's market share. For instance, traders no longer need to buy physical gold or even from a futures contract to participate in the movement of gold prices; instead, they can now buy an exchange traded fund (ETF). With that being said, similar scenarios are now possible with stock, currencies, commodities, and other investments. Hence, traders generally have a wealth of diversified opportunities they can leverage to their individual circumstances.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, August 10, 2019
US Corporate Debt Is at Risk of a Flash Crash / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
By: John_Mauldin
The world is awash in debt.
While some countries are more indebted than others, very few are in good shape.
The entire world is roughly 225% leveraged to its economic output. Emerging markets are a bit less and advanced economies a little more.
But regardless, everyone’s “real” debt is likely much bigger, since the official totals miss a lot of unfunded liabilities and other obligations.
Debt is an asset owned by the lender. It has a price, which—like anything else—can go up or down. The main variable is the lender’s confidence in repayment, which is always uncertain.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
EURODOLLAR futures above 2016 highs: FED to cut over 100 bps quickly / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: QUANTO
The sceptre of recesion is growing worldwide. German industrial production registered its biggest annual decline in almost a decade when it reported numbers in June. We covered it here The result was country’s flattest yield curve since the financial crisis.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Ellen_Brown
When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week, commentators were asking why. According to official data, the economy was rebounding, unemployment was below 4% and gross domestic product growth was above 3%. If anything, by the Fed’s own reasoning, it should have been raising rates.
Market pundits explained that we’re in a trade war and a currency war. Other central banks were cutting their rates, and the Fed had to follow suit in order to prevent the dollar from becoming overvalued relative to other currencies. The theory is that a cheaper dollar will make American products more attractive in foreign markets, helping our manufacturing and labor bases.
Over the weekend, President Trump followed the rate cuts by threatening to impose, on Sept. 1, a new 10% tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese products. China responded by suspending imports of U.S. agricultural products by state-owned companies and letting the value of the yuan drop. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 770 points, its worst day in 2019. The war was on.
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