Saturday, August 08, 2015
U.S. Official Unemployment 5.3%, Real 10.4% / Economics / Unemployment
Initial Reaction
Today's job report (for July) once again showed a divergence between the household survey and the establishment survey.
The divergence was not as large as last month, but was in the same usual direction: The establishment survey was stronger than the household survey.
Household survey employment rose by 101,000 while the establishment survey shows an increase of 215,000 jobs.
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Saturday, August 08, 2015
Stocks, Bonds, USD: What Interest Rate Hike? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2015
The US July jobs report was strong, or at least clearly better than the June report. 215K in NFP, 2.1% average hourly earnings y/y, unemployment rate unchanged at 5.3% and the participation rate also unchanged at 62.6%. The big rally in the US dollar was completely eroded, with EURUSD clawing back all of the 120-pips it lost immediately after the release. The only currencies not to end higher against the USD were CHF (due to renewed SNB jawboning), CAD (disappointing CAD jobs) and GBP and SEK.
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Saturday, August 08, 2015
Nasdaq Monthly Not A Pretty Picture... / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
One thing that has kept me from getting ridiculously bullish over the past several months, and something I have discussed quite frequently, is the look of the index-monthly charts, from the Nasdaq to just about everyone one else. Extremely elevated both in price and on those momentum oscillators. They have stayed overbought for such a long time that after a while you tend to try or even want to pretend they don't exist. If you looked at them head on every day you'd feel like you would never want to own another stock until they've completely unwound themselves. Scary looking is putting it mildly. So we look at the recent selling and wonder if those monthly charts are finally starting to hit the market. That the news out there is meaningless noise, good or bad. That the only thing that matters is quite likely those monthly charts.
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Saturday, August 08, 2015
Despite Low Interest Rates, U.S. Housing Market Rebound is Weak / Housing-Market / US Housing
Elliott Wave International's Chief Market Analyst talks about the outlook for the U.S. housing market
A June 28 headline on CNBC reads, "Homeownership rate drops to 63.4%, lowest since 1967." The report goes on to say "The number of occupied housing units grew, but all on the renter side."
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Friday, August 07, 2015
Gold Price’s Artificial Lows / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
With gold languishing near deep secular lows, its technicals look hopelessly broken. Sentiment is off-the-charts bearish, with traders universally convinced gold is doomed to spiral lower indefinitely. But gold’s weakness this year is very deceiving, as it wasn’t the product of global fundamental supply-and-demand forces. Extreme record shorting by American futures speculators spawned these artificial lows.
Gold’s price is its price, so how the metal got way down here may seem irrelevant. But nothing could be farther from the truth! Fundamentally-driven lows are righteous. If the world gold supply expands faster than demand, or demand contracts faster than supply, then the resulting lows are real. They will persist for as long as fundamentals remain unfavorable, as gold’s sellers have no obligations whatsoever to return.
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Friday, August 07, 2015
The Next Silver Bull Market May Have Already Started / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By Laurynas Vegys
Silver is down 7.1% this year. Will this weakness persist? To find out, let’s look at the key factors in the silver market this year.
- Like gold, silver fell as the US dollar rose on the back of expectations that the Fed will hike rates.
- World demand for physical silver fell 4% in 2014, largely due to a record 19.5% drop in investment demand.
- Silver exchange-traded funds (ETFs) did not see big liquidations in 2014. ETF holdings grew by 1.4 million ounces and recorded their highest year-end level at 636 million ounces.
Friday, August 07, 2015
China Spending 11.6 Million Annual Incomes Per Day Propping Up Stocks / Stock-Markets / Chinese Stock Market
For years now China has been heralded as an economic miracle that will drive the global economy towards growth and eventually eclipse the US as THE superpower in the world.
This theme was driven by the view that somehow China had obtained the magic balance between free-market capitalism and Central Planning. Globally analysts breathlessly talked about China’s insatiable demand for commodities as its economy grew by double digits for three decades straight.
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Friday, August 07, 2015
Fed Taper Tantrum Coming? It Won't Be Where Nearly Everyone Is Looking! The Next Tantrum / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Investors have been expecting another "Taper Tantrum" when the Fed starts hiking.
The term "Taper Tantrum" refers to the surge in US treasury yields (global government bond yields as well), in summer of 2013 when then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke put a spotlight on the wind down of Fed asset purchases (tapering off QE).
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Friday, August 07, 2015
Bill Gross Warns Fed Will Raise U.S. Interest Rates in September by 25 Basis Points / InvestorEducation / US Interest Rates
Bill Gross of Janus Capital spoke with Bloomberg's Tom Keene following today's jobs report.
Gross said he sees the Fed raising interest rates in September by 25 basis points: "There have some pretty strong signals from Lockhart and others that September is the number. And I think it's because of financial conditions. We know that inflation is close to zero. Yes, unemployment is steady, but low... Whether it's 25 or 50 basis points-- probably 25, I hope. 50 would scare the market."
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Friday, August 07, 2015
History Repeats. Gold Protect From Devaluations and Risks / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
- Simplistic gold analysis speculates solely on price
- Forgets vital importance of diversification
- Lorcan Roche Kelly’s analysis lacks all context
- Ignores huge physical demand for gold coins and bars
- Today’s world is very different to the world of the 1980s and 1990s
- Alas, financial crisis has been postponed not averted
- Physical gold will have value when paper and digital wealth is devalued, confiscated or inaccessible …
Friday, August 07, 2015
This Bioscience Company Has "Nearly Limitless" Income Potential / Companies / BioTech
MoneyMorning.com Ernie Tremblay writes: Medical device companies can be profit-making machines – one manufacturer of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines and other high-tech products is up more than 250% over the past 12 months, for instance.
Most of them make their living by staying on the leading edge of innovation, producing some of the coolest gadgets you can imagine.
And, even better, they can deliver some of the most impressive gains in the bioscience industry to their shareholders.
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Friday, August 07, 2015
Gold Price Rebound or Another Breakdown? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
The precious metals complex has attempted to stabilize over the past few weeks. Some markets have had more success than others. Gold has been able to hold $1080/oz while GDXJ has also held its recent low. The large cap indices (GDX, XAU, HUI) have grinded lower to new bear market lows this week. This leads us to the near term predicament. Is the sector basing before a rebound or merely consolidating before another steep leg down?
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Friday, August 07, 2015
The Myth of Gold Price Manipulation / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
How eager are gold bugs to believe their ill fortune over the last four years is the result of sinister forces rather than a lack of prudence on their own part? The answer is easily seen in the writings of gold commentators over the last few months. References to organized manipulation and an official conspiracy to suppress the gold price abound among many analysts and their followers.
The collective passion behind this belief has reached a fever pitch and has created something akin to mass hysteria within the gold investing community. To even question this ingrained belief is to elicit the scorn of the conspiracy crowd. So ingrained is their belief that gold’s losses in the last four years are the result of manipulation that they refuse to pay heed to the underlying fundamental and technical reasons for the metal’s 4-year bear market.
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Friday, August 07, 2015
Global Crude Oil Supply More Fragile Than You Think / Commodities / Crude Oil
Many oil companies had trimmed their budgets heading into 2015 to deal with lower oil prices. But the rebound in April and May to $60 per barrel from the mid-$40s suggested that the severe drop was merely temporary.But the collapse of prices in July – owing to the Iran nuclear deal, an ongoing production surplus, and economic and financial concerns in Greece and China – have darkened the mood. Now a prevailing sense that oil prices may stay lower for longer has hit the markets.
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Friday, August 07, 2015
Is Gold Price Manipulated? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Reader Matt writes ...
Read full article... Read full article...Hello Mish,
I love your blog. I read it every day. You are my non-conspiratorial viewpoint on the economy. Your work keeping an eye on and analysis of Greece lately has been very helpful to me in understanding the way of the world.
Friday, August 07, 2015
One of the Most Useful Stock Markets Reports You Will Ever Read / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
Would foreknowledge of the news put you ahead of the investment crowd?
Editor's note: You'll find the text version of the story below the video.
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Friday, August 07, 2015
Joe Mazumdar Tells Gold Investors to Go Underground to Survive / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2015
Unlike many analysts, Joe Mazumdar of Canaccord Genuity does not expect a substantially higher gold price any time soon. So what are hard-pressed gold investors to do? In this interview with The Gold Report, Mazumdar argues that they should seek high-grade resources—usually underground—in stable jurisdictions that benefit from the strong American dollar. And he highlights seven near-term developers that offer exactly that.
The Gold Report: The price of gold flirted with $1,300 per ounce ($1,300/oz) in January. In July, it fell below $1,100/oz. What happened?
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Friday, August 07, 2015
Hiroshima, Nagasaki 70 Years On, Damascus Next City to be Nuked to Fulfill Bible Prophecy? / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
Japan and much of the world this week will be commemorating America's nuking of two Japanese cities in August 1945 that resulted the incineration of over 250,000 people, 90% of whom were innocent civilians. Whilst to much of the world the nuking of these cities was clearly a war crime, to the US and some of its allies was deemed to be a necessary evil so as to bring a speedy end to the War in the Pacific. Though the facts are that Japan at the time was already negotiating its surrender, so the real reason why the bombs were dropped was so as to justify the huge amount of expense that had been incurred which would only be satisfied by such demonstrations.
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Thursday, August 06, 2015
Shame - A Powerful motivator for Traders / InvestorEducation / Learn to Trade
Shame is a powerful motivator. Especially in this business.
When I was an ETF trader, if a client came in to trade a few hundred thousand shares of an ETF and the price moved abruptly against him right after the trade was consummated, the client would request a price improvement. This was to prevent embarrassment when the client (an execution trader) reported the fill to his boss (the portfolio manager).
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Thursday, August 06, 2015
Europe’s Greek Tragedy / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
In this week’s Outside the Box we have a unique diagnosis of Europe’s ills from … a medical doctor. The author is Dr. Luc De Keyser, who currently serves as the chief medical information officer at Xperthis, the largest provider of hospital information systems solutions in Belgium. He has done pioneering work in multicenter clinical trials, medical ontologies, paleonutrition, and examining human conflict from an evolutionary perspective.
Dr. De Keyser (writing for Stratfor) is not sanguine about Europe’s future. There are times, he reminds us, when a doctor has to make the tough call and conclude that the patient’s case is simply without hope. It's a painful diagnosis and not one that the doctor enjoys sharing with the patient. But at some point the patient must be told.
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