Monday, December 02, 2019

Will Lib Dems Win Sheffield Hallam From Labour? General Election 2019 / ElectionOracle / Sheffield

By: N_Walayat

At the 2017 General Election Labour surprised all including themselves by winning Sheffield Hallam, and ejecting the former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg from Parliament.

Unfortunately for Labour Jared O' Mara turned out to be a total disaster, heralding 2 years of chaos and failure to represent the constituents of Sheffield Hallam that included being suspended from the party, all at a time when the local population was in open revolt to the insane policies emanating out of the city council.

Sunday, December 01, 2019

Stock Market Where Are We?  / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019

By: Andre_Gratian

Current Position of the Market

SPX: Long-term trend – There are no clear signs that the bull market is over.

Intermediate trend –  Most likely building 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. 

Sunday, December 01, 2019

Will Labour's Insane Manifesto Spending Plans Bankrupt Britain? / ElectionOracle / General Election 2019

By: Nadeem_Walayat

Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is literally promising voters everything under the sun! Scrapping Universal Credit, Giving all public sector workers a 5% Labour pay hike bribe, Free personal care fore the elderly, scrapping of tutition fees, £30billion Increase in annual NHS spending!

All of which translates into an increase in government day to day spending of about £80 billion, or 10% per year!

AND additional 'investment' spending of £55 billion a year. For a total annual increase in spending of £135 billion, more than 2.5X the tax bribes of 2017! And that's EXCLUDING Labours plan for mass nationalisation. a bill for which runs into the hundreds of billions!

Saturday, November 30, 2019

Labour vs Tory Manifesto Debt Fuelled Voter Bribes Impact on UK General Election / ElectionOracle / UK General Election

By: Nadeem_Walayat

My first article in this UK general election series concluded in a core forecast of seats for the Conservative party based on the single most accurate predictor of UK general elections - UK house prices momentum.

The remaining articles in this series in the countdown to voting day (December 12th) aim to fine tune my core expectation towards a final seats per party forecast.

Saturday, November 30, 2019

Growing Inequality Unrest Threatens Mining Industry / Commodities / Metals & Mining

By: Richard_Mills

In the 1986 classic ‘Platoon’, Charlie Sheen’s character Chris Taylor tells everyone that he dropped out of college to serve in the Vietnam War. This sets him apart from the other grunts and makes Taylor seem noble and patriotic, giving up school to go fight in a war. But his credo is soon shot down by a black soldier nick-named King, played by Keith David, who tells him: 

“You got to be rich in the first place to think like that. Everybody know, the poor are always being f&$#8! over by the rich. Always have, always will.”

Thirty-five years later, King’s world-weary cynicism is just as relevant. The rich are getting richer, inequality is on the rise, and the middle class, which since the 1950s has been the backbone of the US economy, is shrinking. 

Saturday, November 30, 2019

When Fed Says That Everything Is Fine, Smart People Buy Gold / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

The Fed has published this month the newest edition of its Financial Stability Report. Generally speaking, the level of vulnerabilities in the financial system has moved little since the publication of the May edition of the report. The most of the US central banks’ observations are reassuring: investor appetite for risk generally appears to have returned to a level in the middle of its historical range, while the core of the financial sector appears resilient, with lever­age low and funding risk limited relative to the levels of recent decades.

What is very important in light of the causes of the Great Recession, the largest U.S. banks remain strongly capitalized, while household borrowing remains at a modest level relative to income, as one can see in the chart below. Isn’t that splendid news? Isn’t this time different? It’s bad news for the gold market?

Saturday, November 30, 2019

Conspiracy Theories Are Killing This Nation / Politics / Conspiracy Theory

By: Jared_Dillian

There is a burgeoning conspiracy theory that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his jail cell.

Although it’s not really burgeoning, is it? Most people really believe this. I think once a majority of people believe a conspiracy theory, it becomes fact.

Out of all conspiracy theories, this one is certainly plausible—Epstein potentially had a lot of damaging information on a lot of rich, powerful people.

Saturday, November 30, 2019

How to Clip a Budgies / Parakeets Wings, Cut / Trim Bird's Flight Feathers / Personal_Finance / Animals & Pets

By: Anika_Walayat

This video shows how to clip your Budgie / Parakeets flight feathers to stop them from flying away. Budgies have 10 flight feathers, the more you trim of them you bird will have a lesser ability to fly both for your birds safety in not flying to mirrors or windows or worse escape. Also so that you can take your budgie it outdoors for fun in the garden or local park without it flying away.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Hidden Failure of SIFI Banks / Interest-Rates / Financial Crisis 2019

By: Jim_Willie_CB

Big systemically important banks could be in failure mode. A small group of big Western banks are in deep trouble. The officials might keep it all secret, working feverishly behind the curtains to patch their myriad holes with paper. These SIFI banks are likely major recipients of USFed overnight aid in the form of Repurchase (REPO) and Permanent Open Market Operations (POMO) activity, plus gigantic hidden funny money infusions. Beware the advent of chaos, with lost control. Possibly the main markets will remain tame under tight controls, while the precious metals prices zoom to multiples higher. Always keep in mind then when the POMO volume rises significantly, it means that QE has returned. When the volume is tremendous, it means that Infinite QE is here. Since Chairman Powell admitted in May that QE was a permanent feature with monetary policy, we must conclude that we are at the doorstep of Infinite QE Forever. Thus the Gold price will be required to double and the Silver price triple. All in time. It is written; it will be done.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Use the “Ferrari Pattern” to Predictably Make 431% with IPOs / Companies / IPOs

By: Stephen_McBride

Justin Spittler : Ferrari isn’t used to losing.

Its $250,000+ sports cars are the epitome of luxury, style, and exclusivity. When you see one cruising down the street, most people can’t help but stop and stare.

Ferrari started as a racing company. Founder Enzo Ferrari handcrafted finely tuned speed machines whose sole purpose was to go faster than any other car could.

Winning is in Ferrari’s blood. It has won a record 238 Grand Prix races. Yet recently, Ferrari looked like a loser.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Tax-Loss Selling Drives Down Gold and Silver Junior Stock Prices / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2019

By: The_Gold_Report

Money manager Adrian Day looks at three junior resource companies whose stocks are down significantly in the past few months, and attributes some of this to tax-loss selling. He also lists a handful of companies he believes are best buys right now.

Vista Gold Corp. (VGZ:NYSE.MKT; VGZ:TSX, US$0.59) has published an updated prefeasibility study (PFS) on its Mt Todd project in the Northern Territories in Australia, the largest undeveloped gold project in that country. The revisions to the old PFS include updating both the gold price (upward to $1,350/ounce) and the Australian dollar (downward to US$0.70). Both of these revisions help boost the returns on the project, as did other improvements, including on gold recoveries. Using the sensitivity table for today's prices, the project has a net present value (NPV, with 5% discount) of $1.15 billion and an international rate of return (IRR) of over 30%.

Friday, November 29, 2019

We Are on the Brink of the Second Great Depression / Economics / Great Depression II

By: John_Mauldin

You really need to watch this video of a recent conversation between Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones. Their part is about the first 40 minutes.
In this video, Ray highlights some problematic similarities between our times and the 1930s. Both feature:

1. a large wealth gap

2. the absence of effective monetary policy

3. a change in the world order, in this case the rise of China and the potential for trade wars/technology wars/capital wars.

He threw in a few quick comments as their time was running out, alluding to the potential for the end of the world reserve system and the collapse of fiat monetary regimes.

Friday, November 29, 2019

How to Spot REAL Amazon Black Friday Bargains and Avoid FAKE Sales / ConsumerWatch / Amazon

By: HGR

Amazon Black Friday Sale has already been going for a week with more deals likely to be added today. However, before you rush to click the buy button, understand that many of the sales are FAKES, where items on sale during Black Friday have recently sold for a lower price!

The good news is there is a way to spot the genuine bargains which is the focus of this video across a number of product categories. So watch the video before you shop for how to spot the real vs fake sales on Amazon.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Central Banks’ Gold Buying and Repatriation Spree / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

Central banks’ purchases and repatriations of gold have caught our attention once again. In October, Serbia’s central bank bought 9 tons of gold, following in the footsteps of many other central banks that have been adding to their gold reserves recently, including Russia, Hungary, and Poland.

Nine tons may seem to be a modest purchase, but the transaction was worth $438 million at $1,503 an ounce. And it has raised Serbia’s gold reserves to 30.4 tons, constituting about 10 percent of the country’s total reserves. Importantly, the National Bank of Serbia could carry on with its purchases, as it got clear message from the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic to continue boosting gold reserves in order to be better prepared for the economic crisis: “I think we’ll continue doing that because of what we see in which direction the crisis in the world is moving,” Vucic told the press.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Another Precious Metals’ Reversal Coming Right Up! / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019

By: P_Radomski_CFA

Gold reversed yesterday, and so did the rest of the precious metal sector. Mining stocks and – what’s important – silver showed strength relative to gold and rallied even more than gold. Silver’s strength is important because it indicates that we are already in the second half of the short-term upswing in the precious metals market. If there only was a tool that would provide us with a more precise time prediction… Oh wait, there is one. And it just worked perfectly yesterday.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Stock Market 100% Measured Moves May Signal A Top / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2019

By: Chris_Vermeulen

One type of Fibonacci price structure we use to attempt to measure price trends and identify potential tops/bottoms is the “100% Measured Move” structure.  This is a price structure where a previous price move is almost perfectly replicated in a subsequent price trend after a brief period of retracement or price correction.  These types of patterns happen all the time in various forms across multitudes of symbols to create very solid trading signals for those that are capable of identifying trends and opportunities using this technique. If you want my daily analysis and trade ideas, be sure to get my updates by joining my free trend signals email list.

The first thing we look for is a strong price trend or the initially confirmed reversal of a price trend.  We find that these trending price ranges and initial “impulse trends” tend to prompt 100% measured moves fairly accurately.  The explosive middle-trend is where one can’t assume any type of Fibonacci 100% measured move will happen.  Those explosive moves in a trend that tend to happen in the middle of a price trend are what we call the “expansion wave” of a trend and will typically be 160% or more the size of the initial impulse trend.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Don’t Look for Investing Advice in the Media / InvestorEducation / Learning to Invest

By: Jared_Dillian

When I was a trader at Lehman Brothers, I was told not to talk to the media under any circumstances. If a reporter calls and says, “I’m so-and-so, and I’m from The Wall Street Journal,” you hang up. Click.

There doesn’t seem to be a good relationship between the traders and the reporters who cover them! I wonder why that is?

You might have heard about the incident at the Des Moines Register a month or two ago. A young man went to a football game and held up a sign on camera, asking for money for beer, as a joke. He got $1 million. He donated it—to a children’s hospital.

A reporter at the Des Moines Register decided to do a story on the young man. He dug up some old racist tweets from this guy—the guy that donated $1 million to a children’s hospital—and published them, in an attempt to “cancel” him.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Why You Should Buy Trailer Park Stocks / Companies / Investing 2019

By: Robert_Ross

10,000 baby boomers retire every day.

But retirement won’t mean endless rounds of golf or trips to Tuscany for a lot of these folks, who are now 55–75 years old.

In fact, retirement will lower the living standards of 40% of boomers, according to The Wall Street Journal. That translates to a lifestyle downgrade for 15 million American households.

It gets worse: One in three boomers has zero money saved for retirement. Zilch. Nothing. And 6 in 10 have less than $10,000.

Then there’s the debt problem. The average boomer is $99,000 in debt, according to the Wharton School.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Will YouGov General Election Forecast 2019 be as Wrong as their REAL Forecast was for 2017? / ElectionOracle / General Election 2019

By: Nadeem_Walayat

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on course to win a majority of 68 in parliament at the Dec. 12 election, according to a model from pollsters YouGov that accurately predicted the 2017 election.

Apparently Yougov accurately called the June 2017 General Election! We'll that's what the mainstream press has been liberally regurgitating in response to the release of their MRP forecast for 2019 that predicts the Tories are heading for a 68 seat majority on 359 seats up from 315, with Labour falling from the current 242 to 211.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Forecasting UK General Election 2019 Result With Lessons Learned from 2017 / ElectionOracle / UK General Election

By: Nadeem_Walayat

Boris Johnson finally managed to persuade a frightened of the electorate Labour party to agree to hold a snap UK general election on the 12th of December 2019. An election that Johnson originally planned to hold Mid October ahead of the 31st October Brexit deadline, but extreme paralysis that has been the state of Westminster since June 2017 dragged out the painful process for another couple of months as Britain missed yet another Brexit deadline.

The latest poll of opinion polls puts the the Tories on 42%, Labour on 30% and the Lib Dems on 15% with the trend in the Tories favour which the pollsters continue to go onto extrapolate into the Tories winning the election typically on a majority of over 70 seats as illustrated by https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk