Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Bitcoin after Nonfarm Payroll Data / Currencies / Bitcoin
In short: no speculative positions.
Bitcoin is on the move up and this is the most prominently featured piece of news as far as the digital currency is concerned. On CoinDesk, we read:
Petar Zivkovski, director of operations at bitcoin trading platform Whaleclub, told CoinDesk that in his view, this correlation with the yuan is being used to sell headlines, and that it may not paint a portrait of what is happening on the ground.
"The theory that the Chinese are buying bitcoin due to yuan devaluation is a nice story to tell, but is in our view incomplete,” he told CoinDesk, adding:
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Gold Bullion, Texas Is Taking on a New Battle…Against the Entire Financial System / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
200 men against 1,500 enemy troops.They were never going to win. They fought anyway. Everyone died. It’s a story that most Americans are vaguely aware of, but the tale of the Alamo is seared into the heart of every Texan.
In losing the battle in such heroic fashion, the defenders rallied others to the cause, helping the Tejanos defeat the Mexican army in 1836. Like that, the country of Texas was born. Nine years later, the young nation joined the United States and became the only state to join the union by treaty.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
US Housing Market - It Looks Like the Dumb Money’s at It Again / Housing-Market / US Housing
New home sales just went up a staggering 16.6% in April.619,000 new homes were sold – the most since early 2008 just before the worst of the housing meltdown, and the highest rate of growth in 24 years.
So is this a sign that the economy is back on track?
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Stock Market Rally Appears Complete / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
The trendline has been hit at 2117.11. There may be some probing around at that level, but it appears that all but the shouting may now be over.
This rally took 85 hours. The final decline in Wave (B) took 44 hours, so the combined average is divisible by 4.3.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Fed Interest Rate Hikes Lather. Rinse. Repeat / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Stop me if you've heard this one before: A Fed official walks into a bar and says the economy is improving and rate hikes are appropriate. The patrons order another round to celebrate. Then disappointing data comes out, the high fives stop, and the Fed official ducks out the back...only to come back the next day saying the same thing. Anyone who pays even the smallest attention to the financial media has experienced versions of this joke dozens of times. Yet every time the gag gets underway, we raise our glasses and expect the punch line to be different. But it never is. Last week was just the latest re-telling.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Gold Prices Surge After Poor Jobs Number, Increased Risk Of BREXIT / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
Gold prices surged nearly 3% after the very poor jobs number on Friday, have maintained those gains and appear to be consolidating as concerns about the U.S. economy and BREXIT deepen.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Former Bank of England head Mervyn King joins Alan Greenspan in advocating Gold Ownership / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
In The End of Alchemy, Mervyn King, the former head of the Bank of England, writes of central banks’ frustration in dealing with the stagnant global economy. “Central banks,” he says, “have thrown everything at their economies, and yet the results have been disappointing, Whatever can be said about the world recovery since the crisis, it has been neither strong, nor sustainable, nor balanced.”
Similarly, former IMF chief economist, Olivier Blanchard was recently quoted in the Financial Times as saying: “And so the question is why is it, that with no fiscal consolidation and banks in decent shape, at least in terms of lending, and zero interest rates, we don’t have an enormous demand boom? That is now the puzzle.”
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Fed's Interest Rate Normalization Will Be Far From Normal / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
The Fed traditionally embarks on an interest rate tightening cycle when inflation has started to run hot. This decline in the purchasing power of the dollar will nearly always manifest itself in: above trend nominal GDP, rising long-term interest rates and a positively sloping yield curve. These prevailing conditions are all indications of a market that is battling inflation; and thus prompts the Fed to start playing catch up with the inflation curve.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
EU Referendum - Britain's Immigration / Migrant Crisis Explained / ElectionOracle / Immigration
One of the primary drivers for triggering the EU Referendum Is immigration and more specifically EU immigration that many deem to be out of control as membership of the European Union means free movement of workers which has prevented the UK from controlling its borders now for over a decade as the UK is buffeted by waves of ever escalating migrant flows from Europe each year. All adding to those that came before with total immigration from the EU since 2000 now having passed the 5 million mark. All whilst both Labour and then the Conservative governments promises to be bring immigration under control having amounted to nothing, as the government has NO control over EU migration, which thus continues on an accelerating trend trajectory. Therefore voting to REMAIN within the EU ensures EU migration will continue to increase putting added pressure each year on housing, jobs and social services such as schools, NHS and the benefits system, virtually all of which are already at critical breaking point levels.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Gold Stocks Be Prepared / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2016
There are two patterns I'm watching very closely in here on the HUI which will be a proxy for the rest of the PM stock indexes. This first chart is daily chart which shows the three small consolidation patterns that have formed since the January low. The top pattern basically completed its fourth reversal point today which is an expanding falling wedge. One of two things will most likely happen tomorrow. If this is the correct consolidation pattern then we will most likely see a breakout gap above the top rail which should lead to the next impulse move up. The second scenario would be to see the top rail hold resistance and a move down to the bottom rail of the expanding falling wedge where the 38% retrace would come into play around the 183 area. This pattern is complete except for the breakout.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Crude Oil Price Is Due for a Correction / Commodities / Crude Oil
Technical analyst Jack Chan demonstrates the divergence between oil equity prices and the underlying commodity.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Slow Death Of Markets / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2016
In our May webinar, we discussed how hard markets have become, and how to invest in them. The key trend we identified is that central banks are distorting market behavior and capital flows. As our webinars are actionable, we analyzed several ways to deal with these markets and still be profitable.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
The Illusion of Falling Official 'Unemployment' Fades / Economics / Economic Statistics
Friday's employment report featured the headline unemployment rate falling from 5.0% to 4.7% - which is a huge move lower. About the only encouraging aspect of the report is that markets largely ignored the fantasy headline for a change and focused on the ugly details. Nearly everyone acknowledged the report as bad news and markets reacted accordingly.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Bad U.S. Jobs Report Prompts Stocks Bear Market Rally Towards New All Time Highs! / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
Friday's US jobs report was apparently one of the worst of President Obama's presidency, that saw the US economy add a good 100k fewer jobs than the market consensus was expecting (38k against 160k). That and severe profits warnings from the likes of the mega-bank Citicorp sowed the seeds for what the bears had been praying for all year, finally the bear market that apparently began in August 2015 was now set to resume with a vengeance with even some calling for an opening flash crash!
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Monday, June 06, 2016
U.S. Jobs Report Means Don’t Bank On Interest Rate Hikes! / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
This past Friday, June 3rd, 2016, The Bureau of Labor Statistics released their most recent report regarding new employment data and nonfarm payroll employment which indicates that during May of 2016, it was the smallest increase seen in 28 months.
During May of 2016, there were 144,592,000 payroll jobs within the US, which was up by 1.6 percent, or equivalent to 2.3 million jobs, from May of 2015 (These are all not-seasonally-adjusted numbers).
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Monday, June 06, 2016
First Majestic Silver Stock Soars / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2016
First Majestic Silver has been one of the world’s best-performing stocks in 2016, nearly quintupling at best in recent months. This outstanding Canadian silver miner runs extensive operations in Mexico, and is one of this metal’s purest producers. Despite its blistering run this year, First Majestic remains incredibly well-positioned to greatly leverage silver’s mean reversion higher. Investors should take a look.
First Majestic Silver’s amazing fundamentals won me over as a fan years ago, and I definitely have a dog in this fight. As silver was grinding along near major secular lows late last year, we recommended a new long-term investment in First Majestic at $3.20 in our monthly newsletter. Then in mid-January as silver stocks languished, we added another new First Majestic trade at $2.51 in our weekly newsletter.
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Monday, June 06, 2016
Germany May Be a Bigger Threat to the European Union than Brexit / Politics / European Union
Two polls were recently released that call the European Union in question.
A poll in Italy reported that the Five Star Movement (a populist political party that wants to hold a referendum on whether Italy should remain in the European Union) was the most popular political party in the country ahead of local elections scheduled for next month.
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Monday, June 06, 2016
A Crisis of Exporters Is Brewing—and That Has Massive Global Economic Implications / Economics / Global Economy
BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN
The global system has reached a breaking point. All the pressures that have built up over the months and years have finally begun to tear it apart. There is much to tell, but for today, I will mention only three countries: China, Saudi Arabia, and Germany.
From 1991 to 2008, the consensus was that more exports make an economy stronger. This was true until 2008. However, the exporter is only as strong as his customer’s appetite and ability to buy what he sells. When demand falls, what was once a strength becomes a weakness.
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Monday, June 06, 2016
3 Signs the German Economy Is Falling Apart / Economics / Germany
Germany is the world’s fourth-largest economy. It is also Europe’s largest economy, and any European economic recovery depends a great deal on Germany’s trajectory.
Germany is also the third-largest exporter in absolute terms in the G20 and is nearly as dependent on exports as Saudi Arabia and South Korea. The country, therefore, must export vast amounts to maintain social and political stability.
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Monday, June 06, 2016
The Keynesians Stole The Jobs / Economics / Employment
Late last week the markets were shocked by a surprisingly bad May jobs report - the worst monthly report in nearly six years. The experts expected the US economy to add 160,000 jobs in May, but it turns out only 38,000 jobs were added. And to make matters worse, 13,000 of those 38,000 were government jobs! Adding more government employees is a drain on the economy, not a measure of economic growth. Incredibly, there are more than 102 million people who are either unemployed or are no longer looking for work.
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