Saxo Bank CIO Jakobsen Predicts Another “Shock Drop” in Markets; Addicted to Cheap Money

Jon

Inquiring minds are tuned into the Saxo Bank’s 4th Trading Debate on Volatility and Performance.
Another “Shock Drop” in Markets
Saxo Bank CIO Steen Jakobsen says Another ‘Shock Drop’ is Coming and it’s Coming Soon
Steen takes the view that central bank policy is creating a ‘fantasy land’ for investors and he points out that the recent ‘day dive’ in markets was a closer reflection of reality.
Steen outlines his suggestions for trading ahead of another dip in mid November with targets for the S&P 500 around 1810 and the Dax at 8000 – 7800.
China Replicates West’s Mistakes Says Trading Panel
Martin O’Rourke, Managing Editor of Saxo’s TradingFloor. Com says China ‘Replicates’ West’s Mistakes

This post was published at Global Economic Analysis on October 22, 2014.

The inevitability of QE

Jon

A swan dive in commodity prices followed by the latest stock market correction has investors talking about the ‘D word’ once again. References to deflation abound in the news while economists seriously discuss the possibility of a global economic recession. What, they ask, will it take to arrest the slowdown in the euro zone and China and prevent its coming to U. S. shores? Why central bank intervention, of course!
One of the dominant themes of 2014 has been the unwinding of the U. S. Federal Reserve’s QE stimulus measure. After purchasing as much as $85 billion worth of long-term Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities per month in 2013, the Fed was scheduled to end asset purchases this month. With the revival of deflation fears, however, there has been some talk among Fed members that perhaps it would be wise to delay the end of QE. Considering that the QE tapering process has clearly had a negative impact on stocks and commodities, as well as the real estate market, the suggestion to extend QE further is being seriously considered.
While there have been many negative headline events this month that have been blamed on the September-October stock market decline – ranging from overseas economic concerns to unrest in Hong Kong and Ukraine to Ebola – the real reason for investors’ worries can be boiled down to one major concern, namely liquidity. (Remember the old Wall Street mantra: when it comes to the stock market it’s all about ‘liquidity, liquidity, liquidity’).
The selling panic started just as the Fed was putting the final touches on phasing out QE. While economists were convinced the market would be able to stand on its own two feet without the benefit of QE, investors were far less certain. Adding to the concerns of U. S. investors were recent actions (or inactions) by the heads of Europe’s and China’s central banks which suggested that both regions weren’t committed to pursuing further monetary stimulus. Those concerns have recently been allayed by statements by central bank chiefs in the last couple of days.
Last week, James Bullard, head of the St. Louis Fed, said the Federal Reserve should continue with asset purchases and thus extend QE until the U. S. economy shows more strength. ‘We can go on pause on the taper at this juncture and wait until we see how the data shakes out into December,’ Bullard told Bloomberg Television. ‘Delaying the taper is something we could do right now that could buy us a little time.’
Not everyone at the Fed agrees with Bullard, however. Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren suggested that when the Fed meets for its Oct. 28-29 policy meeting it likely will maintain its original intention of ending QE at that time. ‘The [QE3] program was really designed that once we made substantial progress on the unemployment rate and labor markets more generally that that program would end. If it looks like we’re not going to get that kind of progress now and going forward then we’d have to reconsider it, but I would be surprised if in the next two weeks we get enough data to make us change our mind on that,’ he told CNBC.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 22 October 2014.

The Complete Robin Hood Conference Summary

Jon

From Tepper’s “Short The Euro,” call (which he hopes does better than his “bond bull is over” call) toIcahn’s “HY credit is in a bubble… and I am short” warning, The 2-day Robin Hood conference in NYC had something for everyone. Paul Tudor Jones thinks US equities will outperform the rest of the world this year but “the piper will be paid one day,” and Larry Fink says “equities are health” after last week’s correction… and Whitney Tilson is short Lumber Liquidators (trade accordingly).
Day 1:
Greenlight’s Einhorn: reiterates long SunEdison, says long TerraForm; says he owns warrants on Greek banks Alpha Bank, Piraeus Bank SA; betting on declines in French sovereign debt
Axel Capital’s Nikolayevsky: recommends long Ezcorp (whose products include pawn and payday loans)
Kynikos’ Chanos: recommends shorting Petrobras (‘The economics are just so poor at Petrobras, that we really have called it a scheme, not a stock,’)
Tudor Jones: Paul Tudor Jones Said to See U. S. Stocks Beating Globe in 2014, Bubble in global credit, Rally in USD is over, Short JPY – “The piper will be paid one day.” Jones has been a longtime critic of the U. S. Federal Reserve’s policy of buying bonds. ‘If we maintain the status quo, what will be the probable outcome a decade from now? Look no further than Greece for the answer,’ Jones told investors in 2010. He reiterated the reference to Greece yesterday by saying the U. S. is headed toward that country’s level of debt within the next 15 years.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

Is This Why Stocks Closed Not “Off The Lows”?

Jon

1. October 16: “Buyers beware, the bear market has begun“:
The selloff in global markets is set to continue as a bear market takes hold “for a long period of time,” according to widely followed investor Dennis Gartman, who warned investors not to go long on stocks.
“This is the start of a bear market,” Gartman, the founder of the closely watched Gartman Letter, told CNBC Europe’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. “You stay in cash and you stay in short term bonds and you don’t move out, this is a very difficult period of time and I’m afraid – and
I don’t like to think about it – but this might be the very beginnings of a bear market that could last some period of time,” he warned.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

Harley Bassman: “The Fed Is Trying To Land A Jumbo Jet On A Football Field”

Jon

Once upon a time, one of the best sell-side analysts in the MBS space was Merrill Lynch’s “Convexity Maven” Harley Bassman: he was so good, in fact, he was quickly soaked up to the buyside, or at least the prop-trading side, when several years ago he left Merrill to join Credit Suisse as a prop trader. It was here that he provided some insightful trade ideas such as “The “Anti-Widowmaker” Trade: Get Paid To Wait For The Japanese House Of Card To Collapse” and previewed the “Inevitable ‘Taper‘” at a time when most still didn’t think the Fed was running out of paper to monetize. Then, about a year ago, Bassman disappeared again, only to reappear in a new capacity at recently-troubled bond manager Pimco. It is from here that following a year-long silences, he has just sent out his latest letter, in which he picks up on his favorite topic: implied volatility in rates, and the arbitrage opportunities it provides courtesy of epic risk mispricing in the current quote-unquote market, courtesy of the Fed’s 6 year centrally-planned manipulation of, well, everything.
From Harley Bassman
Financial Market Cognitive Dissonance?
Presently, the financial markets are confronted with two conflicting pricing structures: a U. S. dollar yield curve that anticipates a significant increase in interest rates over the medium term, and an options market that offers ‘rate insurance’ at the lowest prices in decades. Markets may appear confounded by cognitive dissonance, but forward-looking investors can peer through the fog: A return to a more recognizable risk/return profile, even if market returns are lower overall (as may well be the case over the secular horizon), could help investors more confidently align longer-term objectives with strategies. ?In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort caused by holding two or more contradictory beliefs at the same time, or from receiving new information conflicting with existing beliefs, ideas or values.
Presently, the financial markets are confronted with two conflicting pricing structures: a USD yield curve that anticipates a significant increase in interest rates over the medium term, and an options market that offers ‘rate insurance’ at a historically low cost.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

Chain Store Sales Growth Worst Since 2010 (Or Why “The Fed Turned The Market Around”)

Jon

If you wondered why “The Fed turned the market around” last week, acting so sensitively aggressive to act with stocks only down modestly from record highs, one glance at the following chart might answer the question. During last week’s turbulence, ICSC-Goldman Chain Store Sales growth plunged to a mere 2.1% YoY – the weakest in 5 months and worst for this time of year since 2010.

Does this seem like a nation of consumers willing to take up the animal spirits, confident-about-the-future, torch of escape velocity spending from The Fed?
Charts: Bloomberg

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts – Pause, Consolidation, and Infamy

Jon

“In the last days, perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, traitors, heady, high-minded having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
John Henry Newman
And high amongst those self deceptions is the arrogance to presume that the killing of innocents is somehow justified by the means, as some form of revenge, or recompense for other evils done, or as some public statement. This is not justice, nor reform; it is simply murder.
Stocks were shaky on the opens, and then the unprovoked shooting of a soldier keeping guard at the Canadian War Memorial. Oil also moved lower, making traders a little nervous about global growth prospects because of the slackening of demand.
But all in all, this was a very technical day. Stocks had an amazing bounce off support, with the help of the financiers at the Fed, both in terms of words and as some submit the likely purchasing of stock futures at key junctures of the day by the ‘Plunge Protection Team.’
This purchasing of stocks in order to avoid a market dislocation has been a portion of US financial policy going back to the days of Reagan, but was made more prominent under the Treasury of Robert Rubin in the Clinton years. That it exists is not a matter of debate. It is titled ‘The Exchange Stabilization Fund.’ Only their specific actions and motives are open to question.
So what next.

This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 22 OCTOBER 2014.

Stocks Drop On Oil Dump & ECB Reality-Check Drop On Oil Dump & ECB Reality-Check

Jon

While some pointed north to the aweful events in Ottowa, it appears the bigger driver of weakness in stocks today (aside from a sudden absence of broken VIX markets, a lack of Fed Speakers, and the truth about ECB bond-buying being exposed) was the plunge in crude oil. WTI tumbled from over $83 to a low $80 handle after inventories surged more than expected and that appeared the catalyst for equities to catch down to credit weakness. Treasury yields closed the day unchanged but sold off notably in the EU session (like yesterday). The USDollar strengthened for the 2nd day in a row (now up 0.55% on the week) on EUR weakness (CAD volatile around shootings), weighing on commodities. Silver was monkey-hammered early, copper and gold slid, then oil plunged (down 2% on the week) to its lowest close in 18 months. Yesterday’s big winner Trannies tumbled the most today (-2%) as stocks gave up half the week’s gains today.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

Theories Only a Mother Could Love

Jon

The Unleashing of Madness
A number of articles have recently discussed the ECB’s quantitative easing program, which entails inter alia the buying of covered bonds. Here is a quote from an article in the Financial Times:
‘The European Central Bank has started to buy covered bonds, in its latest attempt to to revive lending in the euro zone and stave off a vicious bout of economic stagnation.’
It would be more correct to write: ‘ECB tries its best to revive the credit bubble that thankfully expired in 2008′. This one sentence from the FT above encapsulates already almost everything that is wrong about these currency debasement programs. It is presented as a ‘given’ that central bank meddling with money and credit is necessary to revive, or as it is often put, ‘jump-start’ the economy, which is held to be mired in stagnation for generally mysterious reasons.
And yet, his comment by the FT makes as much sense as the policy, namely zero (a big, fat zero). The ECB will effectively print money, or rather, create digital money ex nihilo, to pay for these purchases. The underlying assumption that creating additional amounts of money can ‘stave off economic stagnation’ is 180 degrees wrong. It will achieve the exact opposite, namely a structural weakening of the economy – even if, or rather, especially if, economic activity as measured by aggregated data seems to ‘revive’ as a result.
Those who have first access to the newly created money can exercise a demand for real goods without first having contributed anything to the economy’s pool of real funding. This makes it more difficult for those people who actually do make such contributions by their productive efforts to create wealth – as they are forced to compete for a shrinking pool of real resources. As Frank Shostak explains in recent article, what happens is that ‘exchanges of nothing for something’ result from the creation of additional money:
‘Before an individual can exercise demand for goods and services, he/she must produce some other useful goods and services. Once these goods and services are produced, individuals can exercise their demand for the goods they desire. This is achieved by exchanging things that were produced for money, which in turn can be exchanged for goods that are desired. Note that money serves here as the medium of exchange – it produces absolutely nothing. It permits the exchange of something for something. Any policy that results in monetary pumping leads to an exchange of nothing for something. This amounts to a weakening of the pool of real wealth – and hence to reduced prospects for the expansion of this pool.’

This post was published at Acting-Man on October 22, 2014.

Moscow Just Took a Quantum Leap Into the Future

Jon

BRICS Rising
While we’re on the topic of Russia, my brothers, I thought it would be an excellent time to go through some of the newest, crucial headlines from that land, with an eagle eye. These headlines are striking affirmations, that further validate that what we’ve been saying here at the Truth HQ, is 100% on the money! There can be no doubt that an alliance, called the BRICS, is positioning itself to be the new anti-globalist, anti-Western central banking force in the world.
In fact, there are well-respected voices within the Kremlin, who’ve now called upon the leaders of the East to step up the game-plan of the BRICS, and turn it from a mere trade and economic union, to an overtly, D. C.-blocking, anti-dollar alliance.
Rest assured that with each passing day, every new brain-dead sanction that D. C. and Brussels hurl at Russia, is actually just another fresh log on the fire, incinerating their own power.
The West is descending into tyranny and poverty, while the East is making strides toward financial and economic liberality, and at ‘double time’. It’s self evident that these preparations are being enacted, in order to live as best they can, in a post-dollar world.
If roughly half the world’s population is making those preparations, then doesn’t that behoove each of our brothers here to do the very same? In fact, to all you preppers out there, each time you read the words ‘East’ and ‘preparation’, your spidey senses should be tingling. You should instantly tell yourself:
If Moscow is doing it…
If Beijing is doing it…
If New Delhi is doing it…
If Cape Town and Brasilia are doing it…
Then maybe this ‘prepping thing’ has gone mainstream where ‘mainstream’ matters most.
You’ve got to remember, that when you when think ‘mainstream’, you cannot do it in terms of what’s happening in America and much of Europe any longer. The words ‘Western’ and ‘relevance’ are quickly divorcing themselves from one another, after enjoying a longstanding, cozy romance.
So let’s take a gander at the newest move that Moscow is taking, to reassert her role as a world-class power player.
Transportation Innovation
Whether you realize it yet or not, railway travel is going to be an enormously important factor in the years ahead, for a host of reasons. There will come a time when many will simply not be able to hop in their car, and literally travel across a continent. The cost, at some point, will be extremely prohibitive. From the factor of ‘peak oil’, which many studious, and well-read analysts talk of, to the fact that those in the West are simply less able to afford that new car(or the gas which fuels it), the keen importance of a rock-steady railway sector is quickly becoming apparent again.

This post was published at The Wealth Watchman on OCTOBER 22, 2014.

Peak Ponzi: Only 13% Of Loans In Bulgaria’s Fourth Largest Bank Had Valid Collateral

Jon

One can debate whether, by virtue of fractional reserve banking, every bank in the world is just a ponzi scheme, and where the stability of the system depends entirely on the level of counterparty faith and general confidence in the system, in other words, a grand con game in which the central bank is tasked with making sure the con works as planned when confidnce gets “a little low.”
One can not debate, however, that a bank had become anything but a pure Ponzi scheme – in this case, a piggybank whose funds were embezzled by its owner as described previously in “Fourth Largest Bulgarian Bank Seized After Bank Run: “Let’s Not Tear Down Our House” Central Banker Begs” – when a token review, only upon its faillure, reveals that 87% of its loans were invalid!
From Bloomberg:
BULGARIA CENTRAL BANK CORPBANK PRE-JUNE REPORTS ‘MISLEADING’ BULGARIA CENTRAL BANK SAYS CORPBANK ASSETS ARE 6.7B LEV BULGARIA CENTRAL BANK SAYS CORPBANK AUDIT SHOWED ONLY 13 PERCENT OF LOANS HAD VALID COLLATERAL

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

100% of Mainstream Interest Rate Theory is Wrong

Jon

An interesting article on MarketWatch today caught my attention. The subhead is the money quote, ‘Back in April every economist in a survey thought yields would rise. Guess what they did next.’
Every? The article refers to 67 economists polled by Bloomberg, all of whom would seem to believe in the quantity theory of money. This means they believe a rising money supply causes rising prices. That means they think the bond market expects inflation. Which means they expect the interest rate to rise, because investors will somehow demand more.
It didn’t happen because every assumption in that chain is false.
Many people also expect interest rates to rise after the Fed’s bond buying program – quantitative easing – ends. Let’s take a look at the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond from 1981 through today. This graph is courtesy of Yahoo Finance, though I have labeled it as carefully as I could for the three rounds of QE so far.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 22 October 2014.

The Mortgage Purchase Index Plunges – Again

Jon

The lack of movement for the purchase index underscores the lack of traffic and lack of demand in the housing sector. – Bloomberg News
Once again the Mortgage Bankers Association purchase applications index fell 5% week to week and 9% year over year (LINK). Mortgage rates have fallen 30 basis points over the past month and 10 points over the past week. This is stimulating refinancings but not buying.
Cash/investment buyers disappearing – cash buyers were 24% of new home sales in September this year compared to 33% in September 2013. If the number of buyers who require a mortgage are falling and cash buyers are fading, who is going to buy homes? This situation is exacerbated for new homebuilders, as 93% of a newly built homebuyers use a mortgage.

This post was published at Investment Research Dynamics on October 22, 2014.

Shots Fired At Ottawa’s Canadian War Memorial, Soldier Down; Parliament On Lockdown

Jon

Two days after two Canadian soldiers were hit by a car driven by Martin Couture-Rouleau, a 25-year-old Canadian who, as The Globe and Mail reported, “converted to Islam recently and called himself Ahmad Rouleau,” Bloomberg reports:
*SHOTS FIRED AT CANADA WAR MEMORIAL *SOLDIER SEEN FALLING TO GROUND AT CANADA WAR MEMORIAL As Glenn Greenwald remarked after the attacks on Monday, the right-wing Canadian government wasted no time in seizing on the incident to promote its fear-mongering agenda over terrorism, which includes pending legislation to vest its intelligence agency, CSIS, with more spying and secrecy powers in the name of fighting ISIS.
CANADIAN PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS IN LOCKDOWN AFTER REPORT OF ACTIVE SHOOTER

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

Saxobank CIO Warns “Another Shock Drop Is Coming.. And It’s Coming Soon”

Jon

Saxo Bank’s Chief Economist Steen Jakobsen is predicting another ‘shock drop’ in the markets within a few weeks. With debt and low inflation continuing to create a nervous atmosphere behind most markets, Steen argues that we will hit fresh lows in mid-November. Steen takes the view that central bank policy is creating a ‘fantasy land’ for investors and he points out that the recent ‘day dive’ in markets was a closer reflection of reality. Steen outlines his suggestions for trading ahead of another dip in mid November with targets for the S&P 500 around 1810 and the Dax at 8000 – 7800. Be long fixed income as it is “a free put on the equity market.. and the economic cycle is not yet ready to adapt to a rising interest rate.”

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

Someone Didn’t Do The Math On The ECB’s Corporate Bond Purchasing “Trial Balloon”

Jon

While we understand that following the biggest market rout in years, it was all up to the central bankers to do everything in their power to restore confidence in the market’s upward trajectory in a time when there are only 2 POMOs left under the Fed’s soon ending QE3 program, which explains not only last week’s 2 QE4 hints by FOMC presidents but also yesterday’s ECB “leak” via Reuters that the central bank is contemplating launching corporate bond buying as soon as December. A leak which sent the market soaring to its best day of 2014. And while we give the European central bankers an A for effort, we can’t help but wonder if someone did a major mathematical error when calculating the “bazooka impact” of yesterday’s leak.
The reason: the same one we have cautioned about ever since 2012; the same why as we also explained in August the ECB’s ABS QE will be grossly sufficient: Europe simply does not have enough eligible, unencumbered collateral in the private sector which can be monetized by the central bank (the same issue that the Fed itself was forced to taper QE once its holdings of 10 Year equivalents hit 35% as we showed last year and the TBAC started warning about gross bond market illiquidity). This goes back to a different issue, namely that Europe historically has funded itself on a secured basis, where the loans are kept on bank balance sheets (and serve as deposit collateral) unlike the US, where the primary source of corporate debt is through unsecured borrowing directly from lenders. We have shown all this before:

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

Gold & Silver Trading Alert: How Will We Know That the Bottom Is In?

Jon

Briefly: In our opinion speculative long positions (half) in gold, silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective.
Yesterday, gold closed higher than it did in the previous several weeks, which seems like a very bullish development for the entire precious metals market until one realizes that miners are still close to their most recent lows.
In short, in our opinion, the answer to the title question is that miners could rally some more in the short term, but we don’t expect the rally to be significant. We expect to see significant rallies after the final bottom is reached (in a few weeks – months), but not before that – at least not based on the information that we have available today. Furthermore, it seems that the next local top will be reached shortly, but that it’s not in just yet.
Why? The USD Index is likely not done declining and the long-term resistance lines in gold have not been reached. What we wrote about these markets yesterday and on Friday remains up-to-date. Still, we would like to show you the latest short-term USD chart as we have added a target area to it (charts courtesy of The target area is relatively close in terms of both time and price. Most of the decline is probably behind us. We have previously written that we expect the USD Index to correct to the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level and the biggest unknown is what the retracement should be based on – the May-Oct. or Jul.-Oct. rally. The former seems a bit more likely because the 38.2% based on the May-Oct. rally coincides with the 50-day moving average (blue line on the above chart).

This post was published at GoldSeek on 21 October 2014.

The Recent Liquidation Avalanche As Explained By Dan Loeb, And Why He Is Back To Shorting Stocks Again

Jon

From Dan Loeb’s latest letter to investors:
Before October, both market corrections and rallies back had been quick and dramatic this year. We feared that there had been a paradigm shift until the last few days, but it now seems the market may be continuing this established pattern. Pinpointing the cause of the initial sharp market movement downward is conjecture at best. Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Laureate Economist and expert in heuristics, has written extensively about the dangers of our tendency to attribute causation to associated events. Keeping his research in mind, we caveat our explanations for October’s correction and volatility.
In early October, a confluence of events transpired in relatively short order, including weaker economic data, political uncertainty, a potential global plague, and bureaucratic meddling, which caused fear to spike, sentiment to decline, and investors to de?leverage. The month got off to an especially rocky start for hedge funds when a court dismissed a claim in connection with the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac GSE complex. Many investors were oversized in this trade and their forced selling kicked off the ‘de?risking’ cycle. Next, oil prices declined sharply and many funds who had large positions in E&P companies suffered enormous losses. Then last week, AbbVie halted its announced inversion transaction with Shire, inflicting great pain on the arbitrage community. Opaquely blaming mysterious ‘meetings with the Treasury Department’, AbbVie walked away from an entirely lawful deal that it had touted as enormously accretive and strategic as recently as two weeks ago, incurring a substantial $1.6 billion break?up fee. A rational conclusion is that instead of a legislative solution that might require comprehensive tax reform, this Administration has decided to unilaterally curb inversions using whatever means are available. Needless to say, this regulatory uncertainty (along with prior detours from the rule of law) will be a wet blanket on top of investors until transparency and a level playing field are restored to the markets.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/22/2014.

India Gold Demand Surges 450% and Bank of Russia Demand At 15 Year High

Jon

Demand for gold continues to be robust and has indeed increased significantly in recent weeks despite gold’s most recent paper driven gold weakness.
Demand in China and India surged again and gold reserve diversification by the central bank of Russia hit a new record high in September as geopolitical tensions rose.

The seemingly insatiable appetite of the growing Indian middle class for gold is causing the government in India to again consider imposing sanctions on the importing of gold.
Gold imports into India in September were worth $3.8 billion. This figure is almost double the $2 billion spent by Indians in August as, once again, the Indian middle class, like their Chinese counterparts, used the opportunity of a weakened gold price to increase their holdings. This was particularly the case in recent weeks and in the run up to the Diwali festival which began yesterday with Dhanteras.
To put this figure in context it is worth noting that in August 2013 gold imports were valued at just $739 million.
Indian gold imports were up 449.7% y/y in September, which is approximately 94 tonnes, using the average gold price for September.
From the point of view of the government in India, this level of demand for the precious metal, which must be imported, is an unwelcome development. “The trade deficit worsened to an 18-month high of $14 billion in September following a 450% rise in gold imports as importers rushed to take advantage of lower prices” reports India’s Economic Times.

This post was published at Gold Core on 22 October 2014.