Thursday, December 14, 2017

The Unprotected, the Protected, the Vulnerably Protected Classes—Which Are You? / Politics / Employment

By: John_Mauldin

Last month I shared in Outside the Box (subscribe here) a new McKinsey report on job automation. Every year, reports like this reflect a process that’s occurred many times in human history.

People discover or invent something useful: fire, the wheel, iron, gunpowder, coal, oil, the steam engine, electricity, the automobile, the airplane, the computer, etc. Life changes as the new knowledge spreads. People either adapt or they don’t.

Those who don’t adapt fade into the background. In the last few decades of their working lives, they end up taking the very lowliest of jobs in order to get some food, clothing, and shelter, but it’s not a comfortable life.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Strap Yourself In - We Are About To See Some Big Moves In Precious Metals / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Avi_Gilburt

Recent price action

The last week has seen the metals and miners drop down into support regions. As I write this, we are sitting just over major support for most of the charts I follow.

Whereas the GDX likely provides the cleanest picture of the market potential right now, I will be providing you guidance about the GDX in my analysis below. And, while I maintain a strong bullish bias for 2018, the action we see in the coming weeks will tell us when we can begin to take a more immediate bullish perspective.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

December 2017 FOMC Meeting and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

Yesterday, the Fed released its most recent monetary policy statement. How can it affect the financial markets?

In line with expectations, the Fed raised the federal funds rate target by 25 base points to the 1.25-1.50 percent range. This way, the U.S. central bank delivered the third hike this year, and the fifth rate increase in the post-crisis period. The most important paragraph of the released monetary policy statement is, thus, as follows:

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Gold’s Upside Target / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: P_Radomski_CFA

In our Monday’s analysis, we emphasized that a lot changed from the short-term point of view, even though price changes in gold and silver were small. On Tuesday, we argued that closing our short position on Tuesday had been justified. Mining stocks soared by over 3% making yesterday’s session the biggest daily rally since August. A lot has changed indeed. Will the rally continue for much longer?

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Year-end US Interest Rate Hike Again Proves To Be Launchpad For Gold Price / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: GoldCore

– FOMC follows through on much anticipated rate-hike of 0.25%
– Spot gold responds by heading for biggest gain in three weeks, rising by over 1%
– Final meeting for Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen
– Yellen does not expect Trump’s tax-cut package to result in significant, strong growth for US economy
– No concern for bitcoin which ‘plays a very small role in the payment system’

Thursday, December 14, 2017

WTI Crude Oil Elliott Wave Analysis / Commodities / Crude Oil

By: Submissions

Science Investing writes: Short Term Price Trend

WTI crude oil started a bullish trend in June 2017. We forecast further upside in the crude oil complex.

For the past month we’ve witnessed a sideways movement in the WTI. It may have traced out a triangle pattern. The move from the 24th of November top looks complex, which is typical for a C-wave of a triangle. Triangles typically resolve into the direction of the greater trend. Hence we forecast price action to the upside short term.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

A Pivotal Week For Gold And Crude Oil / Commodities / Commodities Trading

By: Enda_Glynn

My Bias: Long to a new all time high above 1827.
Wave Structure: Impulse structure to a new high.
Long term wave count: wave (3) above 1666.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Dollar and Bonds are Showing Weakness/Sell Signals / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2017

By: Anthony_Cherniawski

USD/JPY is on a sell signal by crossing beneath the 50-day Moving Average at 112.88.

USD has also crossed beneath its 50-day Moving Average at 93.71. It is currently at 92.45.

TNX has also crossed beneath its 50-day Moving Average at 23.61. It is still within its consolidation area, so I will withhold judgement pending further developments.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Alabama Election, FOMC Meeting and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

Democrats won a fight for the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama. What does it mean for the gold market?

Yesterday, a special election for the United States Senate took place in Alabama. The vote was organized to fill the vacancy which arose when Jeff Sessions resigned from being a Senator to serve as U.S. Attorney General.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Why the Saudis Failed to Cripple Qatar / Politics / Saudi Arabia

By: John_Mauldin

BY ALLISON FEDIRKA : Six months ago, Saudi Arabia announced the closure of its shared land border with Qatar in response to its supposed support of terrorism. The other Gulf Cooperation Council members denied Qatar use of their airspace and ports.

The measures were meant to bring the Qatari economy to its knees. However, the plan didn’t work out as planned and the effort ultimately failed.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

The Jobs Report Misled You—Job and Wage Growth Are Actually Decelerating / Economics / Employment

By: John_Mauldin

The monthly jobs report is one of the most important statistics for investors.

Yes, any single month doesn’t tell us much. Yes, the Labor Department’s methodology has some flaws, both major and minor, which I covered many times in my newsletter, Thoughts from the Frontline (subscribe here). But imperfect as it is, the jobs report is our best look at the economy’s pulse.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

2 Charts That Might Define the Fed’s Jerome Powell Era / Stock-Markets / US Federal Reserve Bank

By: F_F_Wiley

In September, we proposed a theory of the Fed and suggested that the FOMC will soon worry mostly about financial imbalances without much concern for recession risks. We reached that conclusion by simply weighing the reputational pitfalls faced by the economists on the committee, but now we’ll add more meat to our argument, using financial flows data released last week. We’ve created two charts, beginning with a look at cumulative, inflation-adjusted asset gains during the last seven business cycles:

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

UK Stagflation Risk As Inflation Hits 3.1% and House Prices Fall / Economics / Stagflation

By: GoldCore

– UK inflation hits 3.1%, highest in nearly six years
– UK earnings flat – households are still suffering falling real wages
– Stagflation risk as food and drink prices jumped 4.1% in 12 months
– UK house prices fall two-months in a row, down 0.5% in October
– Real stagflation risk now, inflation high and growth slowing
– Savings continue to be eaten by inflation 

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Stock Market Elliott Wave Forecasts - Is the World coming to the end? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017

By: ElliottWave-Forecast

We now live in an interesting time. Every day we wake up with the news about either World Indices make all-time records or bad news about terrorist attack and nuclear test. Historically, humans have gone through these stages and we were able to withstand all these events. At ElliottwaveForecast.com, we try to ignore all these events because, at the end, we believe in the Market Nature or code.

The Market or World Indices is not ready for a crash and we have been saying that for a while. $SPX had a chance for a major correction when it reached the 100% extension at 2234.00 area, but the Index hasn’t done anything and keeps going higher. We believe that the Market works as a whole and that looking only at the $SPX or an individual Index is not enough. For the last 6 years, many Elliott wave Theory participants have been calling for a 50% crash and the crash has never happened.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

A Method Traders Can Use to Confirm an Elliott Wave Count / InvestorEducation / Elliott Wave Theory

By: EWI

When you are watching a pattern develop on a chart, how can you be sure that your Elliott wave count is correct? Elliott Wave International's Senior Analyst Jeffrey Kennedy spent years designing his own technique to improve his accuracy. He came up with the Kennedy Channeling Technique, which he uses to confirm his wave counts. The following excerpt from Jeffrey's Trader's Classroom lessons offers an overview of his method. Get more trading lessons from Jeffrey in his popular free eBook, The Best of Trader's Classroom.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

USDCNH Formed Triangle Pattern On Daily Chart / Currencies / China Currency Yuan

By: Franco_Shao

The USDCNH pair formed a triangle pattern on its daily chart for several weeks. All we can do is wait for a breakout to occur. The price is facing the upper line of the pattern now at around 6.6390. A breakout of this trend line could signal resumption of the uptrend from 6.4412.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Best Time / Month of Year to BUY a USED Car is DECEMBER, UK Analysis / Personal_Finance / Motoring

By: Nadeem_Walayat

A google search soon reveals that the consensus view of the best times of year to buy a used car in the UK tend to coalesce around the two plate changes of the year, i.e. 1st of March and 1st September as being the most commonly propagated online advice to buy just before and after the plate changes. Next often repeated are the dealers end of quarter sales targets for bonuses and other perks, namely by the end of March, June, Sept and December. And also often mentioned are expectations that the best used car deals tend to be in the winter months due to less consumer demand.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Which Central Bank Will Go Under First When the Everything Bubble Bursts? / Interest-Rates / Central Banks

By: Graham_Summers

In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, Central Banks began cornering the sovereign bond market via Zero or even Negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing (QE) programs.

The goal here was to reflate the financial system by pushing the “risk free rate” to extraordinary lows. By doing this, Central Bankers were hoping to:

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

New York Fed Inflation Gauge and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

The New York Fed created a new inflation gauge. What does it mean for the gold market?

The standard inflation measures are the CPI and the PCEPI. They are useful indicators of changes in consumer prices. However, they omit producer prices, commodity prices, or asset prices. Hence, the central banks’ focus on consumer prices makes them blind to asset prices bubbles and the broad inflation pressure. This was the case of both the Great Depression and the Great Recession: the CPI was stable, so the Fed did not perceived its monetary policy as easy, despite the impressive rise in stock and real estate markets.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

A Former Wall Street Veteran: Good Traders Are Born, Not Trained / Interest-Rates / Learn to Trade

By: John_Mauldin

BY JARED DILLIAN : Some people are better with money than others. Is it nature or nurture?

What I mean is: Can investing be taught, or does it come naturally?

I’m going to make a very controversial statement. Financial acumen is almost entirely nature. You are born with it.