Friday, November 20, 2015
Crude Oil Price - Where is it Headed? / Commodities / Crude Oil
All this talk and turmoil and noise and movement and desire is outside of the veil; within the veil is silence and calm and rest. ~ Bayazid Al-Bistami
On the 19th of this month, two articles were published at the same time, one stating that oil could go to $26 and the other stating that oil is ready to trade to $80. Which one is it going to be, $26 or $80 and how is the average Joe going to be able to discern which one is a depiction of what lies ahead. This is the problem with today's mass media, in their quest to attract eyeballs, bombastic and often conflicting articles are published simultaneously. One almost feels that most of the major sites have only one agenda, quantity over quality.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
Justice for All and The Curious Case of Zambia / Stock-Markets / Africa
By Jared Dillian
This chart is driving everything in the financial markets right now.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
Paris, Sharm el-Sheikh, and the Resurrection of Old Europe / / ISIS Islamic State
Soon after the Paris attacks, I picked up the phone to talk over the situation with my friend George Friedman. George is one of the truly world-class thought leaders on geopolitics. We had an animated 20-minute conversation. I didn’t particularly like what I heard.
George thinks we face big difficulties in dealing realistically with the ISIS threat. The more I read—and the more I listen to people like George who have worked these issues for decades—the more I think that we, as a culture, need to face reality.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
Silver Prices and The Management of Perception / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Silver prices and the management of perception economics, that's basically what MOPE stands for. I'm not sure if it was Jim Sinclair that coined that acronym. I think it was, but that's where I heard it for the first time.It's appropriate to have a subsection of propaganda for economics and finance, so this management of perception economics. It’s basically a system or an extension of generalized propaganda. You can also call it social engineering. You could call it a public relations campaign. In fact, public relations is just a PC term for propaganda. The specific type of propaganda that is associated with finance and economics is this management of perception economics.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
The End Of The Economic Recovery, In One Chart / Economics / US Economy
One of the questions on analysts’ minds lately is whether stock prices can keep moving up when corporate sales and profits are falling. But the same can be asked about the overall economy. Why would companies hire more people if they’re selling less stuff? The answer is that they probably won’t. As the chart below — put together by good friend Michael Pollaro — illustrates, business sales and employment have tracked closely since at least the 1990s. When sales have fallen, companies have responded with less hiring and more firing.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
Stock Market Nifty-Fifty Becomes Fab-Five; Return of the 'Four Horseman' / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Anyone recall the logic in the 1960s and 1970s that suggested there were only 50 stocks one needed to look at, and those 50 stocks could never go wrong?
That theory was labeled the "Nifty-Fifty ".
Nonetheless, the long bear market of the 1970s that lasted until 1982 caused valuations of the nifty fifty to fall to low levels along with the rest of the market, with most of the Nifty-Fifty under-performing the broader market averages.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
Waiting for Goldot Again / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
In August of 2005 I wrote an article entitled Waiting for Goldot. It seems silly now but the mood of the time was one of frustration for many gold bugs as the S&P 500 was on a robo grind upward and gold was seemingly going nowhere. The theme of the article was to have patience, gold was just fine. Of course, that period was in the midst of a more traditional inflation, when gold and commodities out performed stocks. So any measure of patience then was a tiny thing compared to what is needed today.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
A Secret New Government Tax -- Unveiled / Companies / Taxes
Dear Investor,
Did you know for one major financial sector the Great Recession never ended?
One look at this chart of the KBW Bank Index and the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index, and you can see it for yourself:
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
Consumer Choices - Why Buyers Buy / Personal_Finance / SME
Veselina Dzhingarova writes: A look at the buying process and how and why consumers make the choices they do.
Most businesses, especially small businesses, don’t pay much attention to why buyers buy. According to Allen Stanley, President of Best Attorney Rankings “Many go about their business with an attitude of providing a good product with good customer service at a fair price. “ While that seems reasonable enough, a better understanding of the buying process and how and why consumers make the choices they do can be extremely beneficial for any size business.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
Michael Curran Goes Down-Market Shopping for Gold Stock Winners / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2015
Most of the low-cost gold producers are fairly valued, says Michael Curran, managing director and mining analyst with Beacon Securities, so he's heading down-market to the advanced development opportunities and early-stage explorers that he thinks could become low-cost producers. Sure there is risk, as Curran explains in this interview with The Gold Report, but the reward could come via either a takeover bid by an established producer seeking to lower its overall costs or by supporting these companies as they transition into emerging producers.
The Gold Report: Please give us two or three key investment themes that you envisage happening in the mining equities space in 2016.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 20, 2015
Syrian Refugees and the Republicans’ Rhetoric of Hate and Fear / Politics / US Politics
Fear, laced with paranoia, is driving the American response against allowing Syrian refugees into the United States.
President Obama has said he would accept 10,000 refugees, all of them subjected to intense scrutiny before being admitted to the country. France, with a population about one-fifth that of the United States, despite the worst attack on its soil since World War II, will accept 30,000 refugees.
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Why Isn’t This Incredibly Bearish Bond Market Development Making the News? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By E.B. Tucker
Editor’s Note: This is one of the most important essays you’ll read all year. In this special edition of the Casey Daily Dispatch, E.B. Tucker shares an urgent warning you’re unlikely to hear anywhere else.
----------
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 19, 2015
SPX Appears to have Stopped its Rally / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
SPX peaked beneath formation resistance at 2087.59 this morning. We may need an alternate structure should it go higher. At the moment, the first level to watch is Short-term support at 2077.40. A decline beneath this puts SPX back on an aggressive sell if you have moved some money to cash. The 200-day Moving Average is at 2077.40, beneath which SPX may be on a confirmed sell signal.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Japans Sinking Economy - Is Anybody Okay Out There? / Economics / Japan Economy
In normal times, the world’s major economies are a mixed bag. Some are up, some are down, some are placid, some are in crisis. It’s only at the boom/bust extremes that everyone finds themselves in more-or-less the same boat.
This is looking like one of those times — and the boat is sinking. Japan, for instance, is back in recession…
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 19, 2015
The Fed induced Stock Market Farce / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
The minutes from the last Fed meeting were released on Wednesday afternoon. The minutes, along with a squadron of jabbering Fed heads lying about the economy doing great, pretty much locked in the most talked about .25% interest rate increase in world history. Evidently the Wall Street titans of greed have convinced the muppets higher interest rates are great for stocks, as the market soared by 250 points. As institutional money exits the market on these rigged up days, the dumb money retail investor buys into the market with dreams of riches just like they did with Pets.com in 2000, McMansions in 2005, and Bear Stearns in 2007.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Stock Market Investors' Sentiment Continues To Improve, But Will It Last / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Briefly: In our opinion, speculative short positions are favored (with stop-loss at 2,140 and profit target at 1,990, S&P 500 index)
Our intraday outlook is bearish, and our short-term outlook is bearish:
Intraday outlook (next 24 hours): bearish
Short-term outlook (next 1-2 weeks): bearish
Medium-term outlook (next 1-3 months): bearish
Long-term outlook (next year): bullish
Thursday, November 19, 2015
The Great Fall Of China Started At Least 4 Years Ago / Economics / China Economy
Looking through a bunch of numbers and graphs dealing with China recently, it occurred to us that perhaps we, and most others with us, may need to recalibrate our focus on what to emphasize amongst everything we read and hear, if we’re looking to interpret what’s happening in and with the country’s economy.
It was only fair -perhaps even inevitable- that oil would be the first major commodity to dive off a cliff, because oil drives the entire global economy, both as a source of fuel -energy- and as raw material. Oil makes the world go round.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Using Elliott Waves: As Simple As A-B-C / InvestorEducation / Elliott Wave Theory
Two resources from Elliott Wave International can help you get started
When Ralph Nelson Elliott discovered the Wave Principle nearly 70 years ago, he explained how social (or crowd) behavior trends and reverses in recognizable patterns. You can learn to identify these patterns as they unfold in the financial markets, and use them to help anticipate where prices will go next. Elliott Wave International has developed a free comprehensive online course -- The Elliott Wave Tutorial: 10 Lessons on the Wave Principle -- which describes these patterns and explains how they relate to one another.
To use the Wave Principle as you analyze the markets, you need a basic understanding of the Elliott method -- the rules and guidelines, the literal shape of individual waves, even when the larger trend may turn.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Has Deflation Been Ddefeated? / Stock-Markets / Deflation
The last 15 years have been among the most turbulent on record. Since the year 2000, America has experienced two recessions (including a near depression), two stock market crashes, numerous selling panics, two terrorist attacks, and one of the slowest economic recoveries on record.
Just when it appears there might be some light at the end of the tunnel and the consumer is getting his confidence back, the threat of global deflation has appeared and has given them reason to remain cautious. This time around the threat of deflation is coming from overseas, specifically from China.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Fed Talk... Rates To Rise.... Watching S&P 500 / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
The stock market has been resilient no doubt. The bulls are buying up moves lower over and over ever since the bull-bear spread got down to minus 10%. In a bear market minus 10% reading isn't all that important. It can and will go much lower than that, but since all we had was a correction when we reached minus 10%, the bulls became active once again. There hadn't been any real distribution volume on that last correction, so that was one way to recognize that the bear had yet to begin. Let's face it, the best way to blast off a new bear market would be to make new highs and get a negative divergence in real time on those horrible-looking, monthly index charts.
Read full article... Read full article...