Tuesday, September 04, 2018
We Have Had 9 Years To 'Prepare For The Stock Market Crash,' So Are We There Yet? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market Crash
This past week, I read an article entitled “When Will S&P 500 Valuations Matter Again?,” written by Gary Gordon.
And, in his first bullet point, he said “truth be told, valuations have not mattered for the public markets for three-and-a-half years.” He then goes on to state that “on virtually any methodology one employs, the U.S. stock market is extremely overpriced.”
In coming to this conclusion, he has reviewed price-to-free-cash-flow, price-to-sales, market-cap-to-GDP, and other valuation matrices. Yet, as he noted in his bullet point, these valuations have not mattered for the three and half years where the market added 50% to its price. Yes, that is a 50% return which cannot be supported by traditional valuation methodologies.
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Tuesday, September 04, 2018
Financial Crisis 10 Years Later – No Lessons Learned / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2018
“A variety of investors provided capital to financial companies, with which they made irresponsible loans and took excessive risks. These activities resulted in real losses, which have largely wiped out the shareholder equity of the companies. But behind that shareholder equity is bondholder money, and so much of it that neither depositors of the institution nor the public ever need to take a penny of losses. Citigroup, for example, has $2 trillion in assets, but also has $600 billion owed to its own bondholders. From an ethical perspective, the lenders who took the risk to finance the activities of these companies are the ones that should directly bear the cost of the losses.” – John Hussman – May 2009
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Wall Street/Fed/Treasury created financial disaster of 2008/2009. What should have happened was an orderly liquidation of the criminal Wall Street banks who committed the greatest control fraud in world history and the disposition of their good assets to non-criminal banks who did not recklessly leverage their assets by 30 to 1, while fraudulently issuing worthless loans to deadbeats and criminals. But we know that did not happen.
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Tuesday, September 04, 2018
UK Mortgage Market Split on Base Rate Hike / Housing-Market / Mortgages
A base rate rise can cause an element of uncertainty in the mortgage market, as it can often be difficult to predict how providers are likely to react to the news. Now, a month on from the Bank of England’s decision to increase the base rate to 0.75%, Moneyfacts.co.uk assesses the impact this rise has had on the mortgage market.
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Tuesday, September 04, 2018
All you Need to Know About the Bitcoin Market / Currencies / Bitcoin
If you’re one of those people wondering what bitcoin is all about, then you’ve come to the right place. Today we’ll be looking at more information about bitcoin, including the overall bitcoin market. Here’s all you need to know about the bitcoin market.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a kind of digital currency, also known as a cryptocurrency. That means that there are no physical bitcoins out there. It is created, handled, and transferred electronically. It is also decentralized, meaning that no one controls or supervises how it is used.
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Monday, September 03, 2018
UK Savers Denied Full Base Rate Rise on Easy Access Accounts / Personal_Finance / Savings Accounts
As we predicted in August, the savings market hasn’t yet fully benefitted from the base rate rise, which savers may have expected. Now one month on, the latest research from Moneyfacts.co.uk can reveal that many of the nine biggest high street banks* have failed to pass on the 0.25% rate rise to their easy access accounts. In fact, the average easy access rate has risen by just 0.06% since last month.
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Monday, September 03, 2018
Toward ‘America First’ NAFTA / Politics / Protectionism
Despite the Trump administration’s frantic last-minute efforts to hammer the NAFTA agreement, the attempt failed within the US timeline, so the talks continue. Why is the revised deal so important to the White House?Last Friday, the trade talks between the United States and Canada broke off without an agreement.
The negotiations on the revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are not over, however. The talks continue and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will meet again Canada’s foreign minister Chrystia Freeland.
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Monday, September 03, 2018
Super Bullish Gold and Silver Set-Up Does Not Bode Well for the US Dollar / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Technical analyst Clive Maund charts gold and silver and finds some positive signs. If you want to understand the great mass of investors, you don't need to spend hours reading a book written about a hundred years ago, the best way way to do it is to treat yourself to some time watching sheep. You can even make something of a vacation of it by going along to a sheep dog trial, such as the classic ones held on the English–Welsh borders in the heart of sheep country or in New Zealand. It's a fun day out and you can learn from chatting with the farmers, and more to the point, you can learn a lot about investors by watching the sheepdogs and the sheep—all you have to remember is that the sheepdogs are the Smart Money and the sheep represent the great mass of investors, the so-called Dumb Money. If you do go to the sheepdog trials on the English–Welsh borders, remember to tag on a day or two to visit nearby Hay-on-Wye, which is stuffed full of secondhand bookshops where you can find some great old books, and mercifully very few of them are written in Welsh.
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Monday, September 03, 2018
Dow Secondary Stock Market High Imminent / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
Previous analysis updated – price as traded as outlined, rising to levels where a secondary is likely to form. However, there is a change to the longer term outlook in that I now favour a more substantial correction to take place before the overall bull market resumes.
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Monday, September 03, 2018
The S&P has become overbought for the first time in 7 months. What’s next / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018
The U.S. stock market (S&P 500) has become overbought for the first time in a long time. It’s 14 daily RSI has reached 70 for the first time since late-January 2018 while it remains above its 200 daily moving average.
In other words, momentum has returned to the stock market.
When momentum returns to the stock market, its forward returns over the next year are very bullish. Don’t turn bearish just because the stock market is overbought.
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Monday, September 03, 2018
Silver Mining Stocks SIL ETF Q2’18 Fundamentals / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
The major silver miners’ stocks have been thrashed, pummeled to brutal multi-year lows. They suffered serious collateral damage as silver plunged on gold’s breakdown, driven by crazy-extreme all-time-record silver-futures short selling. All this technical carnage left investors reeling, devastating sentiment. The silver miners’ recently-reported Q2’18 results reveal whether their anomalous plunge was justified fundamentally.
Four times a year publicly-traded companies release treasure troves of valuable information in the form of quarterly reports. Companies trading in the States are required to file 10-Qs with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by 45 calendar days after quarter-ends. Canadian companies have similar requirements. In other countries with half-year reporting, many companies still partially report quarterly.
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Monday, September 03, 2018
The Four Different Types of Debt Consolidation Loans / Personal_Finance / Debt & Loans
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Sunday, September 02, 2018
Gold is the Sun, and an Anchor / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
The ‘Gold as Inflation Hedge’ Canard
On the one hand you have the sons of Harvey & Erb, who called gold to $800/oz. and caused a stir in the gold “community”. Per Campbell Harvey in this video with Kitco’s Daniella (dig the flowing golden locks of hair)…
“Gold is just too volatile” to be an effective inflation hedge.
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Sunday, September 02, 2018
The Marijuana Investing Game is Just Starting / Companies / Cannabis
I recently traveled to Toronto, Canada. My wife and I took a bicycle tour and traveled to the waterfront, the old Distillery District, over to the CN Tower, up to Chinatown, and then through Kensington.You notice things as you ride around. The people are nice, almost to a fault. The streets aren’t as clean as I expected. The population is very diverse, and they speak many languages.
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Sunday, September 02, 2018
Financial Markets Are Nearing the Line in the Sand / Stock-Markets / Financial Crisis 2018
Most of the classic technical indicators favor a continued rally in stocks into 2019.
And that’s still my preferred scenario for a final peak. One that happens in late 2019, coming off of this Trump rally that started in late 2016.
It could be near its peak growth rate after the 4.1% GDP report.
But it’s not likely to be sustainable for long given that we are running out of workers to rehire, and the real estate bubble seems to be finally be running out of steam due to such high prices making homes and rentals unaffordable.
Sunday, September 02, 2018
How Much does the UK Really Owe in Debt? / Interest-Rates / UK Debt
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Sunday, September 02, 2018
Sheffield City Centre Then and Now - Town 1960 vs 2018 / Local / Sheffield
Here's Sheffield city centre, or Town as we like to call it, 1960 vs today (2018). How things have changed and continue to change with much work to be down for instance on the hole that once was Castle Market.
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Saturday, September 01, 2018
A Close Look at the Bitcoin Bubble / Currencies / Bitcoin
A few weeks ago on CNBC, an analyst compared the bitcoin bubble to the early internet bubble.What?!
We’ve been saying that since late December 2017, when bitcoin was just starting to crash.
And oh, did it crash.
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Saturday, September 01, 2018
US Interest Rates - A Pound of Cure / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
This week, as investors and economists fixate on record highs set by major stock market indices, they have ignored much more significant developments that emerged from the Federal Reserve's annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell delivered a speech that somehow was almost universally interpreted as a reiteration of his commitment to continue to raise rates throughout the next few years. "Steady as she goes" was the takeaway from just about any news outlet. But the Chairman's actual message was essentially the opposite of what the media reported. From my perspective, it provided evidence that President Trump has succeeded in getting Powell's mind right on the need for the Fed to continue to stimulate the economy, no matter how much evidence emerges that it is already over-stimulated.
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Saturday, September 01, 2018
The Age of Change Is Coming / Companies / Technology
I’m often called the “muddle-through guy.” When I consider opposing scenarios or opinions, I figure reality will be somewhere in between. That’s right more often than you might suspect.
So, let’s consider two seemingly conflicting ideas.
- Major economic pain is coming.
- We have a bright, prosperous economic future.
Can both of those be right? I think so.
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Saturday, September 01, 2018
Upside Targets for Gold, Gold Stocks & Silver / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
After a vicious selloff precious metals have stabilized. Its not a surprise given the breadth and sentiment extremes we noted and had predicted earlier. Although recent gains have met some resistance, the immediate path of least resistance should be higher. Let’s take a look at the key support and resistance levels for the metals and the miners.
Gold has retreated after hitting $1220/oz a few days ago. That was the first area of resistance for this rebound. The next resistance level would be around $1235. If Gold can surpass $1235 then look for a move up to $1260. There is very strong resistance above $1260 while $1180 should be strong support.
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