Friday, July 20, 2018

Gold Stocks Investment Wanes / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Zeal_LLC

Gold’s summer doldrums are dragging on this year, with this asset slumping longer and lower than usual.  Several converging factors are responsible.  The stronger dollar has convinced gold-futures speculators to sell aggressively, and gold’s downside momentum has fed on itself.  Investment demand has waned on the resulting weaker gold prices and euphoric near-record-high stock markets, but that should reverse soon.

Summers are usually gold’s weakest time of the year seasonally.  So investors and speculators need to be mentally prepared for lackluster or bearish trading action this time of year.  Market summers run Junes, Julies, and Augusts.  And their first halves are simply devoid of the recurring outsized spikes in gold investment demand seen during much of the rest of the year.  Thus gold prices tend to drift neglected.

Friday, July 20, 2018

Diversifying Your Stock Investing Strategies is Smart Investing / InvestorEducation / Learning to Invest

By: Boris_Dzhingarov

When you look to invest, you will find that there are a wide range of options to choose from and also a few types of investments you can make. The range of Investments vary from real estate, to stock Investing, bonds, commodities, new companies, and even Bitcoin. Each of these has its own set of parameters and investment guidelines. An investor can also approach investing from a standpoint of risk/ reward. Typically speaking any investment that has a higher reward scenario will be more risky than one that offers less reward.

Friday, July 20, 2018

Custom Global Stock Market Indexes May Be Sounding Alarms / Stock-Markets / Global Stock Markets

By: Chris_Vermeulen

Over the past 4+ months, we’ve been working away trying to keep our readers aware of the risks and concerns that were originating out of some foreign markets and how that might relate to the US markets.  We remember a point in time back in June or July 2017 when we, suddenly, started receiving emails and calls from moderately large Indian, Indonesian and other foreign development companies asking to schedule time for an “introduction call”.  It is not unusual for us to receive cold calls from development firms looking for new projects, but at one point we were getting 2 to 3 calls a week.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

S&P 500 Just 2% Below Record High, But There's More Stock Market Uncertainty / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Paul_Rejczak

Stocks were basically unchanged on Wednesday, as investors took short-term profits off the table following the recent rally. Is this a topping pattern before downward reversal, or just a quick flat correction before another leg up? Will quarterly earnings releases drive the market higher?

The U.S. stock market indexes were mixed between 0.0% and 0.3% on Wednesday, as investors' sentiment remained pretty bullish following the recent rally. The S&P 500 index reached the highest since the early February, as it slightly extended its short-term uptrend yesterday. It currently trades just 2.0% below the January's 26th record high of 2,872.87. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.3% and the technology Nasdaq Composite was unchanged on Wednesday.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Stock Market Technical Picture / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Christopher_Quigley

No two recessions are ever the same.
One of the best indicators of a possible recession on the horizon is the inversion of the American Treasury interest rate yield curves. Inversion means the yield on short term rates are abnormally higher than long term rates. With Jerome Powell, the FED chairman, publically committed to another two .25% interest rate hikes this year, it is highly probable that by year end the 2/10 year yield curve will have inverted. (Currently the spread between the 2 year and 10 year yield is only .26%). In the recessions of 2000 and 2008 the American economy experienced severe recessions within 22 months and 24 months, respectively, upon yield curve inversion.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Gold Market Signal vs. Noise / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne

In his book Nobody Knows Anything, my friend Bob Moriarty wrote about the difference between signal and noise. Unfortunately, much of the information in the gold space or what passes for such is really noise. Conspiracy theories around manipulation, price suppression and China are all too popular while important factors like real interest rates, investment demand and gold’s relationship to equities are neglected. At present the Gold market has experienced a critical breakdown yet in some circles a new theory and explanation is gaining traction.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Don’t Get Too Bullish on Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: Troy_Bombardia

Gold has been getting crushed recently, and now sits near several support levels.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Bitcoin Price Rallies to Upper Channel – What Next? / Currencies / Bitcoin

By: Chris_Vermeulen

Even we were concerned with Bitcoin briefly traded below $6k in late June.  Yet, the recent upside price move was incredibly quick and the price of Bitcoin ran right up to our upper price channel.  We believe this will become a new price peak over the next few days/weeks where the price of Bitcoin should continue to drop from these levels near $7500.  We know there are many Bitcoin investors that want to hear us state that it should continue to push higher, but there are other factors at play here that may limit this movement.

The price channels that are currently constraining the price of Bitcoin originate back in February and March of 2018.  The low and high price rotation within these months start the points of interest for our research team.  From these points, we have continued to identify key price levels that appear to contain breakouts.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Trump Manchurian President Embarrasses Putin By Farcically Blowing his Russian Agent Cover / Politics / US Politics

By: Nadeem_Walayat

Trump effectively blew what little cover he had left of being Czar Putin's Manchurian President, as he lavished praise on the Russian Dictator whilst deriding his own law enforcement and Intelligence agencies and their evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, as Trump chose to side with Putin by following the Czar's script rather than the growing volume of evidence of Russian interference in the election that just days earlier had prompted the US to indict 12 Russian intelligence agents for hacking of DNC servers. That were a likely response to Trump's own statements made during the campaign for the Russians to to hack and leak Hillary's emails as he continued with the theme at the Press conference in Helsinki.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

The Fonzie–Ponzi Theory of Government Debt: An Update / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2018

By: F_F_Wiley

This post is excerpted from my book Economics for Independent Thinkers, although with some updating. It seems relevant after the CBO’s latest long-term budget outlook, which in its optimistic “baseline scenario” called for America’s net federal debt to double over the next 30 years, rising from 76% of GDP in 2017 to 152% in 2048.

Before reaching this chapter or even picking up this book, I imagine many of you were already loosely divided into the two major camps of the public debt debate. The first camp is already concerned and doesn’t need my research to form an opinion. These people stress the math involved in borrowing—the idea that you get do extra stuff today, but you have to somehow pay for it in the future. Meanwhile, those in the other camp ask, “So what?” They might argue that America will make good on its debt because “it always does.” Or they’ll point confidently to America’s unique advantages as a military superpower, paragon of political stability, and steward of the world’s predominant reserve currency. Confronted with the lessons of history, they’ll say, “This time is different.”

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Economic Combustion Powering SPX to Test All-Time High? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Mike_Paulenoff

A big-picture perspective of the S&P 500 (SPX) shows that the most recent up-leg off of the June 28 low at 2691.99 has climbed to a new high at 2816.25, or +4.6%. In so doing, the SPX has hurdled its prior two significant rally peaks at June 13 (2791.47) and at March 13 (2801.90), positioning the index for upside continuation to my next optimal target zone of 2845-2860.

Should such a scenario unfold, the SPX, in effect, will be climbing towards a test of its all-time high at 2872.87 from January 26 of this year. Only a break below 2789 will trigger initial signals that the June-July up-leg needs a breather.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Will the Fed’s Interest Rate Tightening Trigger Another Financial Crisis? / Stock-Markets / Financial Crisis 2018

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

The recent currency and debt crises in Argentina and Turkey raise questions about the condition of the global economy in general and the emerging countries in particular. Are they merely isolated events without broader implications or are they canary in the emerging market mine?

This question is timely and worryingly justified in the context of the ongoing Fed’s tightening cycle and the ECB’s shy steps toward normalization of its monetary policy. Historically speaking, the Fed’s tightening used to end with some sort of market crisis, including U.S. recession and turbulences in the emerging markets which rely heavily on dollar-denominated debt (as a reminder, the dollar lending outside the U.S. stands at about $11 trillion today). As one can see in the chart below, practically all recessions in America occurred after the Fed’s tightening cycle.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Stock Market Investor “Buy the Dip” Mentality is Still Strong, Which is Bullish for Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Troy_Bombardia

The stock market’s “buy the dip” mentality is very strong right now.

The S&P 500’s pullbacks are becoming smaller and smaller, while the S&P 500 has started to break out.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Stock Market Longer-Term Charts Show Incredible Potential / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Chris_Vermeulen

Our weekend analysis of the markets continues to amaze our research team simply because we see so many other researchers continue to miss the signals.  We’ve been calling this market bottom since the middle of February 2018 and we have stuck to our analysis even though we’ve taken some flack from others about it.  Now, with earnings nearly upon us and the markets poised to either breakout higher or rotate lower, our longer-term analysis shows the markets are in pretty good shape for a continued upside rally.

This week, there are 214 companies reporting earnings data.  Next week, there are 781 companies reporting earnings data.  The following week, another 1003 companies release earnings data.  Combined, we are going to have 1998 companies releasing Q2 earnings data and each of these, to some extent, could drive the markets higher or lower as this data is digested.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

A Better Yield Curve for Predicting the Stock Market is Bullish / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Troy_Bombardia

The Treasury yield curve is flattening, which has some investors and traders turning bearish. Most people focus on the 10 year – 2 year yield curve, which is close to inverting.

*Investors and traders only need to be careful once the yield curve inverts. A flattening yield curve on its own means nothing until it becomes inverted.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

U.S. Stock Market Cycles Update / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018

By: Jim_Curry

With the action seen in past months, it is time to take a look at what the various time cycles are saying in regards to U.S. stocks - as well as any particular technical indications that track the same.

Short-Term Cycles
In terms of time, as noted in our daily Market Turns report, the short-term cycles projected a trough for the SPX by the June 28th timeframe, plus or minus a day, with the index bottoming out at the 2691.99 figure - made right on that June 28th date. From there, the cycles called for strength into the mid-July timeframe - which we are obviously now into, and where another short-term peak is soon due with the 20-day cycle, though it can easily come from higher numbers than already seen:

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Trump or Putin - who is the Master in the Art of the Deal? / Politics / US Politics

By: BATR

As summits go, this Trump/Putin melodrama has been billed with the lowest expectations. Style versus substance has been the focus of the Fake News Press. Low energy and boring is the assessment. Trump missed a great opportunity to lay out Putin on the carpet of public opinion. He got trumped by the wily KGB operative. So goes the coordinated condemnation by the U.S. media and talking heads. The internationalists in the foreign policy establishment suffer another blow in their plan to fire up the tension and brinkmanship with the Russian Bear. This attitude is vividly exemplified by that deranged spook and former director of the CIA, John Brennan: Trump's press conference with Putin 'nothing short of treasonous'.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Cayton Bay Hoseasons Caravan Park Holiday Summer 2018 Review / Personal_Finance / Holidays

By: Anika_Walayat

Thinking of booking a caravan park for summer holidays UK 2018? Then look no further than in this series of videos of what it's like to holiday at a UK caravan park. This is at the Hoseasons Caravan Park at Cayton Bay, North East England, not 10 miles from Scarborough. In our fourth video in this series we walk around the caravan park for a taste of the sites, sounds, facilities and some of the stuff to do.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

SMIGGLE SLIME Review / Personal_Finance / Shopping

By: Anika_Walayat

Smiggle has belatedly joined the slime craze so in our newest Smiggle video we take a look at Smiggle SLIME! What's it like and how much it costs.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

What Did Crude Oil - Platinum Link Tell Us Last Week? / Commodities / Crude Oil

By: Nadia_Simmons

The first session of this week was undoubtedly dominated by the sellers. Thanks to their sharp attack, black gold lost over 4%, making oil bears’ short positions even more profitable. Will it still be possible to earn money on crude oil in the coming week?

Let’s examine the charts below to find out (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).