Thursday, January 02, 2020
Most Popular Financial and Stock Markets Analysis of 2019 / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2019
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Stock Market Trend Forecasts Review 2019
The Stocks bull market is on course to end 2019, it's 11th year up by 24% with the Dow's last close of 28,462 against 23,062 of 31st Dec 2018.
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Thursday, January 02, 2020
Gold Market Update: Precious Metal Up, Dollar Down / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
By: Clive_Maund
Technical expert Clive Maund charts the reasons the precious metals have entered a bull market.
Gold is now a major bull market, as evidenced by its strong breakout from a giant 6-year long base pattern in August. The larger trend is up. We had thought that it might react back closer to the breakout point before turning higher again, but it didn't, and started higher again in recent days over the Christmas period. This is a sign of greater strength.
There is a broad array of fundamental reasons for a bull market of unprecedented magnitude in gold, but by far the most important of them is the ongoing and accelerating destruction of currencies by central banks. They are responding to crushing debt burdens with money creation on a gargantuan scale, and we can expect them to maintain a low or negative interest rate environment and to pump money like crazy, since faced with a choice between a liquidity lockup and systemic implosion, and rampant money creation leading to hyperinflation, they are bound to follow the latter course. It is more gradual and buys them more time. While all central banks around the world are playing the same game, they will find it very hard to keep up with the Federal Reserve of the U.S., which is ramping up money creation at a frenetic pace, the effect of which will be to collapse the dollar, which is already starting to break down—hence last week's rally in gold and silver.
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Thursday, January 02, 2020
Basel III and Bailouts: What Do They Mean for Financial Markets? / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2020
By: The_Gold_Report
Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable interviews Andy Schectman of Miles Franklin Precious Metals Investments about the implications of monetary policies being implemented by central banks worldwide, and about the state of the U.S. economy.
Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation is Andy Schectman, the president of Miles Franklin Precious Metals Investments. Today we will address Basel III, the state of U.S. markets and the Fed's new bailout program, and how you may benefit financially.
Andy, you're a big thinker, and I would say years ahead of most people in the space in your ability to critically and analytically think and cipher through the noise, which is why we're delighted to have you on the program today. I want to begin our discussion at the 30,000-foot level, and have you share with us the implications of Basel III. Let me begin by asking, what is Basel III, and why should precious metals investors be aware of this decision-making body?
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Thursday, January 02, 2020
Stock Market What To Expect In Early 2020 / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2020
By: Chris_Vermeulen
The US stock market has recently rallied throughout most of the last year after the very deep downside price rotation in late 2018. Our researchers believe there is a very high likelihood of this trend continuing in early 2020, yet we would need to see confirmation across various broader indicators before we could determine the strength of this upside price trend.
We warned that a downside price rotation may happen near the end of 2019 – which never really materialized. The August 2019 downside price rotation looked like it may turn into a deeper downside price move, but the news cycle ended that move as the US Fed decreased rates again and the news of a pending US/China trade deal continued to be pushed into the news cycle. Here we are 3+ months later and we really have no US/China trade deal signed yet.
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Thursday, January 02, 2020
Why History’s Longest Stocks Bull Market Is Just Getting Started / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2020
By: Robert_Ross
Doom and gloom predictions about the stock market drive click. I get it.
But those predictions have fallen flat for 10 years straight.
US stocks keep marching higher, and history’s longest bull market keeps getting longer. Here’s a chart of the S&P 500 since February 2009. It’s climbed 325%:
Thursday, January 02, 2020
Gold Investors Wrongly Fear The “COT” / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
By: Avi_Gilburt
As a student of market history, I always find it interesting, and even sometimes quite comical, how certain fallacies about markets are continually propagated by investors and analysts alike. Throughout my career in writing about metals, I have tried to bring many of these to light, and explain why so many of the fallacies should be ignored.
The latest in the string of fallacies relates to the Commitment of Traders report (COT). The common argument suggests that as long as the commercial traders are shorting gold heavily, then gold cannot rally. And, much has been made of late regarding the heavy commercial short positions pointing to a major drop in the gold market. Yet, history suggests otherwise.
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Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Stock Market Trend Forecast Outlook for 2020 / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2020
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The Stocks bull market is on course to end 2019, it's 11th year up by 24% with the Dow's last close of 28,462 against 23,062 of 31st Dec 2018.
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Tuesday, December 31, 2019
3 Ways to Play the Ageing Population Healthcare Surge / Companies / Healthcare Sector
By: Robert_Ross
2019 was a good year for stocks.US stocks have rocketed 28% this year. This is the second largest annual gain since 1999. And the tenth straight year stocks have climbed higher.
This has a lot of investors worried that stocks could tank soon. But this bull market is far from over. My research shows stocks should continue to rise until at least September 2020.
And falling interest rates could help that happen… especially for healthcare stocks.
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Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Precious Metals & Miners Prepare For An Early 2020 Liftoff / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Over the moderately quiet 2019 Christmas holiday season, while the US and global stock markets continue to push higher, precious metals and miners have begun to move dramatically higher as fear settles into the markets. Our researchers believe this upside move in metals and miners represents a measured increase in investor concern related to early 2020 and the global economy.
Our research team believes the current rally in the US stock market is an enthusiastic upside price move that does not have true fundamental support. We’ve authored a number of articles and research posts that highlight our belief and we suggest this upside move in Gold and miners is a sign of underlying fear that is growing in the global markets.
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Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Helpful Tips for Managing International Finances / Personal_Finance / Current Accounts
By: Justin_Weinger
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Monday, December 30, 2019
Crude Oil Bulls Again Rejected At the Resistance / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Nadia_Simmons
Crude oil futures extended gains, breaking above the upper border of the rising green trend channel during yesterday’s session. This upswing took the futures right to the red gap. Let’s see how this has reflected upon the daily indicators.
They look quite extended, suggesting that the space for additional gains may be limited and that a reversal is probably just around the corner.
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Monday, December 30, 2019
Stock Market Review / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Andre_Gratian
Current Position of the Market
SPX: Long-term trend – There are no signs that the bull market is over.
Intermediate trend – Most likely near an intermediate top.
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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Monday, December 30, 2019
Don’t Fall for This Deadly Dividend Trap / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Robert_Ross
When’s the last time you bought Kraft Mac & Cheese?I imagine it’s been a while.
Thirty years ago, every cupboard in America had a box. But consumer trends have shifted. People don’t want hyper-processed foods like Kraft Mac & Cheese anymore.
Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors of all time, must have overlooked this when he bought a 27% stake in Kraft Heinz (KHC) in 2015.
Not long after, Kraft’s sales flatlined. Earnings rose slightly, but this came from cutting costs, not growing sales.
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Monday, December 30, 2019
Fed’s Fake Stock Markets / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019
By: Zeal_LLC
The US stock markets soared in 2019, blasting to dozens of new all-time-record highs. Euphoric traders attributed these massive gains to strong corporate fundamentals and US-China trade-war progress. But the real driver of stocks’ astounding ascent was the Federal Reserve’s epic extreme easing. A panicking Fed pulled out all the stops to goose and levitate stocks, leaving fake artificially-inflated markets in its wake.
This year’s huge stock-market rally delighted nearly everyone, generating widespread euphoria. That made Americans feel wealthier, leading them to spend more freely. That pushed corporate sales and profits higher than they otherwise would’ve been. Speculators and investors loved the easy largely-one-sided gains. And stocks’ biggest fan, Trump, reveled in what lofty record stock markets implied about his policies.
With the flagship US S&P 500 stock index (SPX) rocketing up an amazing 28.6% year-to-date at best by late December, everything looked awesome. Record-high stock markets must mean the US economy is booming, the best of times. But under that happy-headline facade, the real stock-market picture is deeply troubling. The SPX’s monster gains have been directly driven by an American central bank terrified of a recession.
Some background context is necessary to understand 2019’s stunning stock-market action. Back in late 2008, the US stock markets were slammed by the first true panic in 101 years. The SPX plummeted 30.0% in a single month, which proved part of a larger 56.8% bear. That threatened a severe recession if not an outright depression due to stock markets’ powerful wealth effect. The Fed rushed to mitigate those risks.
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Monday, December 30, 2019
Is Sports Direct Racial Profiling Shoppers? Meadowhall Sheffield / ConsumerWatch / Shopping
By: N_Walayat
Racial profiling is basically where retailers single out shoppers on the basis of skin tone for 'special attention'. Usually this means staff traipse around the store after targeted shoppers with smartphone's or walkie talkies in hand in an obvious manner, which obviously creates for an unwelcoming climate for shoppers.
Virtually every ethnic person in Britain experiences being racially profiled whilst out shopping to some extent, in fact it's become so common that many like us have become immune to the special attention, and just tend to blank them out.
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Monday, December 30, 2019
How to Fix Dirty Disk Volume Read Only Windows Error 0x80071AC3 / Personal_Finance / How to Guides
By: HGR
Eventually virtually every Windows user is going to come across the Dirty Disk error message that basically locks a hard drive from being able to write to it as a protection. Which usually coincides with an unexpected loss of power be it your computer being switched off without shutting down or more usually an external hard drive being unplugged whilst data is being written to it. Nine times out of ten, your drive will be fine, but there will eventually be that one time when you find that you are no longer able to write data to the drive.
What's basically happened is that Drive has had it's Dirty Bit set, and to get to write again that dirty bit needs to be cleared. Which can prove more difficult to do than many web sites and youtube suggest to run CHECKDISK and the problem will be fixed. Instead in reality you will find that you have less than a 50% chance of Check disk working amongst a whole list of methods often recommended as listed below -
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Sunday, December 29, 2019
Does Bitcoin Have Value; Is It Money? / Currencies / Bitcoin
By: Kelsey_Williams
Writing about Bitcoin is a challenge for several reasons. It has a short history (ten years), it is highly complex, and there is a certain vagueness to the logic behind the concept. When reading about it, or listening to explanations, I wonder whether or not I understand it adequately. I also wonder how many others do.
Much has already been written and discussed, such that further commentary might be superfluous. But some additional perspective likely won’t hurt. So, for those who asked…
What is it? Bitcoin, simply stated, is a form of digital currency. That is how most people describe it when pressed for an acceptable answer. That does not make Bitcoin unique, though, since most of our money supply today is in the form of digital currency.
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Sunday, December 29, 2019
Americans Are Not “Free to Choose” Anymore / Politics / Social Issues
By: John_Mauldin
When you write for a wide audience, no matter what you say, or how carefully you say it, some people will misunderstand. Sometimes it’s amusing. Reading through my feedback (and I do read all of it), I get called both heartless capitalist and bleeding-heart socialist in reaction to the same article.
In fact, I’m neither. I am a capitalist, and proudly so. I believe free markets are the best way to bring maximum prosperity and peace for everyone. But I’m not heartless, nor do I think markets are perfect. Even the best medicines can have serious side effects. That is doubly so when you aren’t taking the medicine correctly.
Sunday, December 29, 2019
The Ethics of a Gold Standard / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Antonius_Aquinas
The efficacy of a metallic monetary system is beyond dispute at least among real economists which eliminates just about 95% of whom are now engaged in the “profession.” Money, which gold is, allows for specialization, the division of labor, and provides the means for mankind to escape from barter and, thus, a primitive existence. Like free trade, money naturally integrates mankind both among and between peoples.
A system of central banking with an unbacked paper currency is the antithesis of a gold standard. Manipulation of currencies by central banks, mostly through debasement, hinders trade, creates distortions, and ultimately leads to the dreaded business cycle. Murray Rothbard aptly describes the baneful results of state intervention in the monetary system:
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Saturday, December 28, 2019
Trump Impeached in the House! Is It Time for Gold Now? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
Last week, the House voted to impeach Donald Trump. This is the third time in the U.S. history such an event has happened to the sitting President. What does it imply for the gold market?
Trump’s Impeachment, Explained
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump. He became only the third U.S. president in history to be impeached, following Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.
According to the Constitution, the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, a Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Democrats created two articles of impeachments which refer to these other high crimes and misdemeanors. The first one accuses Trump of abusing his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, the former U.S. Vice President, in order to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
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