Sunday, March 10, 2019
Taylor Wimpey Reports £811m in Profits boosted by Help-to-Buy / Housing-Market / UK Housing
By: Boris_Dzhingarov
The housing market slow down many feared resulting from the uncertainty of Brexit and been quelled by the United Kingdom’s low mortgage rates and its help-to-buy program. Housebuilders across the country have reported profits this year including Taylor Wimpey, and that signals a solid start to 2019.Taylor Wimpey, the third largest builder in Britain, reported pre-tax profits of £810.7 million for the 2018 year on 15,275 house built. This was an increase of 19% and saw its shares rise by 3%, and that saw them becoming one of the top on the FTSE 100.
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Sunday, March 10, 2019
SPX Big US Stocks Fundamentals / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Zeal_LLC
The widely-held mega-cap stocks that dominate the US markets recently finished reporting their Q4’18 financial results. Because the tenor of stock markets changed radically last quarter, this latest earnings season is more important than usual. An extreme monster bull market suddenly rolled over into a severe near-bear correction in Q4. How major corporations fared offers insights into whether a young bear is upon us.
Four times a year publicly-traded companies release treasure troves of valuable information in the form of quarterly reports. Required by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, these 10-Qs and 10-Ks contain the best fundamental data available to traders. They dispel all the sentiment distortions inevitably surrounding prevailing stock-price levels, revealing corporations’ underlying hard fundamental realities.
While 10-Qs with filing deadlines of 40 days after quarter-ends are required for normal quarters, 10-K annual reports are instead mandated after quarters ending fiscal years. Most big companies logically run their accounting on calendar years, so they issue 10-Ks after Q4s. Since these annual reports are larger and must be audited by independent CPAs, their filing deadlines are extended to 60 days after quarter-ends.
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Sunday, March 10, 2019
US Retail Sales Panic Data Could Be Just a Glitch / Economics / Retail Sector
By: John_Mauldin
Recession antennae popped up everywhere on February 14.
The Commerce Department reported retail sales fell 1.2% in December. It was the worst month-over-month decline since 2009:
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Draghi Won’t Send a Rate Hike Gift to the Gold Bulls / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The ECB eased its monetary stance. It launched another round of cheap loans to banks and promised to keep interest rates unchanged this year. It means that Draghi will not hike during his presidency. What does it all mean for the gold market?
ECB Unveils New Monetary Stimulus in Response to Slowdown
The ECB left its interest rates unchanged. But it pushed out the timing of its first post-crisis rate hike until 2020 at the earliest. As we can read in the monetary policy statement.
The Governing Council now expects the key ECB interest rates to remain at their present levels at least through the end of 2019, and in any case for as long as necessary to ensure the continued sustained convergence of inflation to levels that are below, but close to, 2% over the medium term.
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Sunday, March 10, 2019
Best Budget Gaming Headset 2019 EasySMX Review / Personal_Finance / Gaming
By: Sami_Walayat
This is a review of EasySMX's gaming headphones headset that we bought off Amazon for £18 (https://amzn.to/2EYU8CK). This competitively priced headset features a seperate headphone and microphone jacks, and a USB to power the cycling LED lights. The headphones can be easily used with a myriad of devices without othe need for any drivers, just plug in the headphone jack into for instance an Android phone, PC, or gamesconsole and they instantly work, same for the microphone jack, where an adapoter isprovided for single socket devices.Most importantly the sound quality from the low priced headset is excellant as illustrated by our video review.
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Saturday, March 09, 2019
Yield Curve Inversion and the Stock Market 2019 - Video / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Yield Curve Inversion
An inverted yield curve is basically when the yield on 2 year US government bond exceeds the 10 year US bond yield as worried investors opt to disinvest from risky assets in favour of safer longer term government bonds thus driving down long bond yields below that of nearer term bonds. And the closer the yield curve gets towards towards an inversion the greater the likelihood for a future recession. So far the yield curve inversion has successfully forecast the last 3 economic downturns in the United States. Though the YCI has proved less reliable elsewhere, especially for Australia.
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Saturday, March 09, 2019
Should We Rethink Nuclear Power? / Commodities / Nuclear Power
By: OilPrice_Com
While it seems to fly in the face of everything we believe and have been taught about nuclear power, it may actually be the safest form of power production that we have. Ironically, the immense potency of the power of splitting an atom is simultaneously what makes nuclear weapons so dangerous as well as what makes nuclear power so safe.
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Saturday, March 09, 2019
Palladium Hits Record High / Commodities / Palladium
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
Gold is no longer the most valuable precious metal! Palladium dethroned it! We invite you, thus, to read our today’s article about that metal and find out what is the fundamental outlook for the palladium market.
We have a new record! Please take a look at the chart below, which displays the palladium prices since the beginning of the year. As one can see, the price of palladium soared in the first two months more than 20 percent, jumping above $1,500!
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Saturday, March 09, 2019
Strong Historical Probability of Natural Gas Long Trades Setting Up / Commodities / Natural Gas
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Would you believe that March and April, historically, shows a 2 to 1 statistical probability of NG moving higher. Each of these months shows, historically, that NG has a strong potential for at least a $1.00 upside price move in both March and April. Only 1/3 of the historically testing time (23 years) did the price of NG actually decrease.
How do we know this? We’ve built proprietary price modeling and data modeling solutions that allow us to isolate and verify this data. This data was tested on a Monthly price basis for the statistics we’ve provided, above. When we run this same test on Weekly data, the results continue to support our conclusions.
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Saturday, March 09, 2019
Various Stock Market Indicators are Plunging. Run for the Hills! / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Troy_Bombardia
The S&P 500 is pulling back from its 2800 resistance. Meanwhile, the latest readings for various widely publicized technical and fundamental indicators plunged. And right on cue, mainstream financial media broadcasted these indicators with a megaphone because hey, nothing sells like bad news. (Modern day finance is all about the marketing hype).
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Saturday, March 09, 2019
Unsecured Debt hits £15,400 per UK Household / Interest-Rates / UK Debt
By: Submissions
It has been revealed in statistics provided by the trade union body, the TUC, that unsecured debt in the UK has now reached a new high of £15,400 per British household. To compile its figures, the TUC compared the total amount of money lent in overdrafts, personal loans, payday loans, store cards, and credit card debts.
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Friday, March 08, 2019
QE4EVER Stock Market 2019 / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The stock market soared has soared since the start of 2019, this despite President Trump shutting much of the US government down for 5 weeks accompanied by increasing global economic doom and gloom from a slowdown in China, to Germany teetering on the brink of recession a with Italy already having tipped into recession.
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Friday, March 08, 2019
Practical Prepping for Financial SHTF Scenarios / Stock-Markets / Financial Crisis 2019
By: MoneyMetals
Preppers – the sort of people who build bunkers, stockpile supplies, and bear arms – aim to survive “SHTF” scenarios.
When war breaks out, when the power grid goes down, when the banks fail, when the U.S. dollar collapses, when social unrest spreads, when the stuff hits the fan… will you be prepared?
Risks are rising.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists maintains a “Doomsday Clock.” For 2019, it “sets the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight—the closest it has ever been to apocalypse.”
Friday, March 08, 2019
The Real New Deal / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
While we’re on the issue of the Green New Deal, here’s an article by Dr. D. with an intro by Dr. D., one he sent me in the mail that contained the actual article, and that I think shouldn’t go to waste. I hope he agrees.
Waste being the key term here, because he arrives at the same conclusion I’ve often remarked upon: that our societies and economies exist to maximize waste production. Make them more efficient and they collapse.
Ergo: no Green New Deal is any use if you don’t radically change the economic models. Let’s see AOC et al address that, and then we can talk. It’s not as if a shift towards wind and solar will decrease the economic need for waste production (though it may change the waste composition), and thus efficiency is merely a double-edged sword at the very best.
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Friday, March 08, 2019
How High Cost Credit Affects Financially Unstable Families / Personal_Finance / Credit Cards & Scoring
By: Submissions
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Friday, March 08, 2019
Gold and Silver Precious Metals Pot Pourri / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Rambus_Chartology
I know it may have come as a shock to some of you on why I raised some capital by selling a few PM stocks today. Whenever you see a false breakout of any chart pattern and the price action trades below the bottom rail of the original pattern that can setup a bearish situation. It’s like a head fake. The stock forms what looks like a great breakout and maybe even accompanied by a breakout gap. Everything looks fine. Then you get the backtest to confirm the breakout. Sometimes we can see several days of backtesting waiting for the breakout move to begin.
The first sign of trouble is when you see the price action trade below the breakout point or below the top rail in this case the bullish rising wedge. Many times the trade can still be saved if the bottom rail of the rising wedge ends up holding support. Once the bottom rail gives way then red flags start flying that something is amise. Many times when you see a false breakout of a chart pattern you can see a strong move in the opposite direction. Again, its like a head fake that gets you moving in the wrong direction before the real move takes place.
Lets start by looking at a daily chart for AU which built out a very nice looking rising wedge formation complete with a breakout gap above the top rail. AU was one of the leaders and it looked like it was showing the way higher for the PM stocks but after the reversal bar at the top of the chart AU declined back into the rising wedge negating the breakout. All was not lost yet as the bottom rail of the falling wedge could still provide support and save the pattern. Once the bottom rail was lost that put me on high alert to watch the price action very carefully for more deterioration. Monday morning AU opened with a downside gap and today the price action closed below the 50 day ema which strongly suggested to me it was time to get out of this trade.
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Friday, March 08, 2019
Stock Market Downward Reversal? Stocks Still Relatively Close to Their Recent Highs / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Paul_Rejczak
Wednesday's trading session was bearish, as stocks retraced their Tuesday's advance. However, the market remained at its recent local lows. So is this a topping pattern or just a pause before another leg up?
The U.S. stock market indexes lost 0.5-0.9% on Wednesday, retracing their Tuesday's advance, as investors took some short-term profits off the table. The S&P 500 index retraced more of its October-December downward correction of 20.2% on Monday, before reversing its intraday advance and getting back below the 2,800 level. The market continued to fluctuate close to the previous medium-term local highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.9% on Wednesday.
The nearest important resistance level of the S&P 500 index remains at 2,800-2,820, marked by the medium-term local highs. On the other hand, the support level is at around 2,765-2,770, marked by the recent local lows. The support level is also at the previous daily gap up of 2,757.90-2,760.24.
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Friday, March 08, 2019
Gold and the Political Theater: Is The Tail Wagging the Dog? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
As the old saying goes, politics is a show business for ugly people. Fair enough, but what does it have to do with gold? Let’s jump right in and find out!
There Is No Trade War
Economic reports are rarely fun. But when we read the latest US trade report, we could not help but laugh. It turns out that the US goods and services deficit was $59.8 billion in December, up $9.5 billion, or almost 19 percent, from $50.3 billion in November. For 2018, the goods and services deficit was $621.0 billion, an increase of $68.8 billion or 12.5 percent, from 2017. In other words, despite Trump’s “America First” policies and trade wars, including tariffs aimed at shrinking the trade deficit, the US trade gap has widened. Actually, it surged to a 10-year high last year, as one can see in the chart below. As if that was not enough, the shortfall with China hit a record peak! Isn’t that funny?
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Friday, March 08, 2019
Is Recession Near? / Economics / Recession 2019
By: John_Mauldin
I trust Dave Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff. He’s been a perpetual speaker at my SIC conference for at least 10 years.
Dave is screaming recession every chance he gets, but he is not a perma-bear by any means.
He’s been bullish at the right times in the past. Dave turned uber-bullish 9 or 10 years ago. It was way outside the consensus at the time, but he has never cared much about being part of the consensus.
So while I don’t entirely agree with him this time, I pay attention.
Friday, March 08, 2019
Elliott Wave Analysis of YY Inc (YY) / Companies / Company Chart Analysis
By: WavePatternTraders
The recent rally from the lows made in December 2018 appears to be in 3 waves, so I suspected it a 4th wave as part of either idea, at this stage, I would still expect to see a new low based on both of the ideas. The difference is that one idea will end an impulse wave (5 wave decline) and complete the decline from the highs made in Jan 2018. The other idea would still see a bounce, however a new low thereafter would be favored.I can see the pros and cons for both ideas, but I would turn more bullish from a new low as even the less bullish idea (idea 2) would imply a rally again for wave [4]. So it would present a bullish opportunity below the lows made in December around $54.00 - 49.00.
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