Monday, December 11, 2017
Soaring Deficits Force US Treasury into Foolish Debt Gamble / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Michael_Pento
The Treasury opened the fiscal year 2018 with an October budget deficit of $63.2 billion. That is 37.9% larger than the $45.8 billion deficit in October of last year. The primary reason behind this surge in year-over-year deficits was a 21.6% increase in net interest expenses. The annual red-ink problem looks even greater when recognizing that the national debt is already over 105% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), at nearly $21 trillion, and with an additional $10 trillion projected to be added in the next ten years.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Amazon’s 75,000 New Robots Are Your Answer To No Wage Inflation / Companies / Amazon
By: John_Mauldin
Like millions of other people, I am a fan and a user of Amazon.
They do make buying things convenient, especially little things that you might have to go to art specialty stores to find. I’m a huge user of the Kindle app, too.
I will admit that I don’t quite understand the Amazon business model of growth over profits. But I have noticed that most of the profits Amazon actually makes are coming from their non-commercial side—stuff like cloud services.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Bitcoin can be stolen. Although Can’t be hacked / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Dr. D: Bitcoin can be stolen. Although “Bitcoin” can’t be hacked, it’s only software and has many vulnerabilities. If held on an exchange, you have legal and financial risk. If held at home, you could have a hard drive fail and lose your passwords. If it’s on a hardware fob like a Trezor, the circuits could fail. For a robust system, computers themselves are pretty fragile. You could write down your passwords on paper, and have a house fire. You could print out several copies, but if any of the copies are found, they have full access to your account and stolen without you knowing. You could have your passwords stolen by your family, or have a trojan take a screen or keystroke capture.
Monday, December 11, 2017
UK Mortgage Providers Giving SVR Borrowers a Reprieve / Housing-Market / Mortgages
By: MoneyFacts
Moneyfacts UK Mortgage Trends Treasury Report data, not yet published, highlights that the average standard variable rate (SVR) has increased since the base rate rise on 2 November, as expected. Despite this, it falls short of the anticipated 0.25% rise, instead increasing by 0.14%.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Have Stocks Reached A Permanently Rigged Plateau? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Brady_Willett
A painting recently sold for a record $450 million, a blanket recently sold for $1.5 million, Bitcoin has gone ballistic, and Cramer thinks there are ‘bubbles’ everywhere except stocks. Are these the types of signals that bears have been waiting for? In a word, maybe.
The problem with calling for an end to the good times is that there has been so many false contrarian signals in recent years it is as if the very idea of “risk/reward” has been temporarily laid to waste. To use a quick example, in early 2016 alarm bells were ringing as junk bonds were imploding, confidence was sliding, and technical market levels were being struck. At the time it looked like the big bad bull was done.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Trying To Beat The System Is A Fatally Flawed Investment Strategy / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Submissions
Bill Cara writes: This week’s article will begin with a parable. Soon, however, this piece of fiction might become source material for a Harvard Business School case study.
So, recently there was a private members club with 99 men and women who had each paid $1,000 to join. At the first monthly meeting, somebody suggested it would be a good idea to top off membership at 100, so the call went out to their friends. Lo and behold, one person stepped up with an offer of $1,500 and the capital account grew to $100,500. The next month however another individual offered $2,000 to join and the members were elated to grow their numbers to 101 with the capital account now up to $102,500. Nobody complained the following month when another individual came forward with $2,500 to join, bringing membership to 102 and the capital account to $105,000. As the months flew by, there was always one more person who wanted to join, and the offers were up to $3,000, $4,000, and $5,000 in months 4, 5 and 6. The original members became giddy and decided to set the price higher by $1,000 each month, and each month a new member joined at the posted price. After a year, the membership was up to 111 and the members actually believed their memberships were worth $11,000 and so they valued their club at $1,221,000, putting it up for sale.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Is This The Beginning Of The Next Silver Rush? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: OilPrice_Com
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Monday, December 11, 2017
The Dow Gold Ratio / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Rambus_Chartology
This next set of ratio charts I consider to be the most important ratio charts if you are deciding whether to be an investor in the INDU or in Gold.
When the price is rising The INDU ( Dow Jones Industrial Average ) (a proxy for General Stock Markets) is rising against Gold , and when it is falling Gold is rising against the Dow.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Investors Why Do You Keep Doing This To Yourself? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Avi_Gilburt
As I am known to do, I will peruse articles on the web to find some interesting tidbits. And, I found one in one of Lance Robert’s recent posts.
Within this article, he cited a Doug Kass note, which stated:
“Despite many who are suggesting this has been a 'rational rise' due to strong earnings growth, that is simply not the case as shown below . . . Since 2014, the stock market has risen (capital appreciation only) by 35% while reported earnings growth has risen by a whopping 2%. A 2% growth in earnings over the last 3-years hardly justifies a 33% premium over earnings.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Finally, Gold Speculators Start To Bail, Setting Up A Big Q1 2018 / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: John_Rubino
It took a lot longer than it should have, but gold futures traders have finally started behaving “normally.” The speculators who were extremely, stubbornly long – and who are usually wrong when they’re this excited — had maintained their over-optimistic bets when they should have been stampeding for the exits, making the last few months both boring and depressing for gold bugs and related investors.
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Monday, December 11, 2017
Customer Wins Morrisons More Card Points Christmas Jackpot! / Personal_Finance / Freebies and Comps
By: HGR
More card holders could be in a for a checkout till surprise Jackpot win! Find out what happened in this video and what you need to do to ensure you have a 100% chance of also winning a Morrisons Christmas Jackpot! Hint, this is your LAST week to achieve 5 out of 6!
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Evidence of a Stock Market Top Mounting / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Andre_Gratian
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend – The bull market is continuing with no sign of a major top in sight.
Intermediate trend – Possible top at 2665.
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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Sunday, December 10, 2017
Is it “Late 2007” For the Everything Bubble? / Stock-Markets / Liquidity Bubble
By: Graham_Summers
Timing the end of a major bubble is extraordinarily difficult as it entails figuring out when a critical mass of investors shift from greed to fear.
Having said that, we’ve recently seen a number of developments that would suggest we’re near the end of the current Bond Bubble.
Back in June the world saw the unveiling of perhaps the single most insane investment of all time: the 100-year bond.
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Sunday, December 10, 2017
Bitcoin Doesn’t Exist – Forks and Mad Max / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Dr. D: Well, all parts of the system rely on accurate record-keeping. Look at voting rights: we had a security company where 20% more people voted than there were shares. Think you could direct corporate, even national power that way? Without records of transfer, how do you know you own it? Morgan transferred a stock to Schwab but forgot to clear it. Doesn’t that mean it’s listed in both Morgan and Schwab? In fact, didn’t you just double-count and double-value that share? Suppose you fail to clear just a few each day. Before long, compounding the double ownership leads to pension funds owning 2% fake shares, then 5%, then 10%, until stock market and the national value itself becomes unreal. And how would you unwind it?
Sunday, December 10, 2017
SMIGGLE Christmas 2017 Fun Shopping Trip Haul Surprise! / Personal_Finance / Shopping
By: Anika_Walayat
It's Christmas at the Meadowhall Shopping Centre! So off we went to our favourite shop SMIGGLE for a fun shop christmas lights trip, looking for surprise gifts other than pencil cases. See what we bought as we journey beyond stationary.
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Saturday, December 09, 2017
Bitcoin Doesn’t Exist – Putting the Banks Out of Business / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Dr. D: The money, the unaccountable, uninhibited release of tokens can do more than just buy centuries of hard labor in seconds, it‘s also a method of control. Banks, our present issuers of money, can approve or destroy businesses by denying loans. They can do this to individuals, like denying loans to unpopular figures, or to whole sectors, like gun shops. They can also offer money for free to Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla, which have no profitable business model or any hope of getting one, and deny loans to power plants, railroads, farms, and bridges as they fall into the Mississippi.
Saturday, December 09, 2017
Buying an Approved Used Land Rover Discovery Sport - Travelling the DIstance / Personal_Finance / Money Saving
By: HGR
Thinking of buying an approved used Landrover Discovery Sport or another land rover model? Then here is what you can expect when buying from a main dealer. In this video we literally travel the distance to a main landrover dealer (Hunters - Chester) for the purpose of part exchanging and then driving away with an approx 1 year old Land Rover Discovery Sport.
Saturday, December 09, 2017
China’s Struggle for Market Economy Status / Politics / Global Economy
By: Dan_Steinbock
Recently, the Trump administration joined the EU and rejected the view that under the WTO terms China should have graduated last year to market-economy status. Now Trump is using Obama’s accession legacy to undermine world trade.The accession debacle intensified a year ago, when then president-elect Trump stated categorically in Iowa that “China is not a market economy.”
In the prior months, Trump had pledged to beat back the Trans-Pacific Partnership TPP (which he buried on his inaugural day), undo the North-American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA (whose fifth round of talks ended recently in simmering friction), and impose huge tariffs on China and rewrite the rules of world trade - in which the accession mess could prove a milestone.
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Saturday, December 09, 2017
Stock Market Bull/Bear Ratio: Is "More Leverage" Better? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: EWI
Bull/Bear Ratio: Is "More Leverage" Better?
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Saturday, December 09, 2017
Jerome Powell vs. Janet Yellen / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
As expected, Donald Trump nominated Jerome Powell as the next Federal Reserve Chair. He is often perceived as a merely Republican version of Yellen. But is that really the case? Let’s analyze in a more detailed way what impact on gold Powell’s term as the head of the U.S. central bank would mean for the gold market.