• Tag Archives Stock Market

  • Random Thoughts on this Crazy Charging Stock Market Bull

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods. Arthur Schopenhauer
    The proverbial question for many years has always been; when will this stock market bull end? By every measure of logic and or common sense, this bull market should have crashed years ago. However, it hasn’t, and much to the angst of many professionals continued its march upwards against all the odds. We would like to stop here and state that this market is now very close to trading in the extremely overbought ranges. A market can trade in the overbought ranges for an extended period. In this instance, we analysed monthly charts, where each bar represents a month’s worth of data. Historically, a market has experienced a correction within 5-10 months from the occurrence of this event. As of yet, the markets are not trading in the extremely overbought ranges on the monthly charts, but they are very close to moving into this zone.
    Why has this market defied the expectations of all the professionals?
    One of the culprits could be the emotional state of the masses. There is something almost insane taking place in this bull market; the higher it trends, the more anxious individuals come. It almost does not make sense as the opposite of this is what normally takes place. Were we not experiencing this first hand, we would find it almost impossible to believe such an event could occur.

    This post was published at GoldSeek on 21 June 2017.

    This entry was posted in Market Commentary and tagged

  • Global Equities Markets Weaker Amid Falling Oil, Bond Yields

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    (Kitco News) – World stock markets were mostly lower overnight, due in part to falling crude oil prices recently and by lower world government bond market yields.
    Slumping oil prices and lower bond yields suggest inflationary price pressures will remain squelched. U. S. stock indexes are also pointed to weaker openings when the New York day session begins.
    On the world geopolitical front, Saudi Arabia has a new crown prince, in a surprise change of leadership for that country. The new prince could take a harder line on Iran, reports said.

    This post was published at Wall Street Examiner on June 20, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Government and tagged

  • Oil Bear Market Sends Global Stocks, Yields Sliding; Chinese MSCI Addition Fizzles

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    In an eventful overnight session which saw a historic transition in Saudi Arabia, an unexpected Republican victory in the Georgia Special Election, China’s inclusion in the MSCI EM index and Travis Kalanick’s resignation, S&P futures continued to fall, alongside stock markets in Asia and Europe, while oil prices extended their drop despite a larger than expected draw reported by API on Tuesday. The USDJPY continued its recent slide, dropping just shy of 111, while GBPUSD tumbled as low as 1.2589, the lowest since May announced the UK election, only to reverse and recover all gains ahead of the Queen’s speech on Wednesday.
    Despite the much hyped inclusion of 222 mainland Chinese shares in the MSCI EM index starting May 2018, which will by only 0.73% to include Chinese A-shares, the Shanghai composite closed a modest 0.5% higher, as the initial euphoria fizzled following calculations that buying pressure from the MSCI shift would be muted. MSCI estimated the change, due around the middle of next year, would drive inflows of between $17 billion and $18 billion. China’s market cap is roughly $7 trillion.
    The index provider also set out a laundry list of liberalization requirements before it would consider further expansion. “We suspect that it will be a long time before this happens,” wrote analysts at Capital Economics in a note. While China’s weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index may ultimately rise to 40 percent or so, this rise is likely to be slow,” they added. “The upshot is that any initial boost to equities is likely to be small.”

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 21, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Politics and tagged

  • 5 Ways Fed Rate Hikes May Squeeze Your Wallet

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    The Federal Reserve nudged up interest rates another .25 points last week. Of course, nobody was surprise by the central bank’s move. It was widely expected. Nevertheless, the Fed’s latest policy move has everybody bullish on increasing rates into the future
    Of course, nothing has fundamentally changed. As Paul Singer said earlier this month, the financial system is no more sound than it was in 2008. All of this talk about rate hikes will vanish like a vapor if actual economic data continues to point toward a slowdown.
    But since everybody is talking rate hikes right now, this is probably a good time to consider just how rising interest rates will effect your wallet.
    We tend to think about Federal Reserve policy in macro-economic terms. How will it effect the stock market? What kind of bubbles will it blow up? How will it impact the price of gold? But Fed policy also has a direct effect on the average American. In simplest terms, rising rates mean it will cost you more to pay off credit cards and other loans. That’s not good news for an economy buried in debt.
    Here are five ways rising interest rates can put the squeeze on your pocketbook.

    This post was published at Schiffgold on JUNE 21, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Government and tagged

  • Could Recent FANG Weakness Be Signaling the End of the Bull Run?

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    As we survey the financial markets and global economic backdrop, it appears that a change in the wind could be slowly taking place. Across the tides of global capital markets, a chillier wind may be starting to blow, ushering in what could soon be some sweeping changes in the major trends for primary capital markets. In China, the air of debt deleveraging seems to be taking root, with tightness in the money markets, bond market collapses, bond market closures, and inverted yield curves. In addition, there are also widespread rumors surrounding the viability of an assortment of wealth management products that have embedded duration mismatch problems baked into the cake.
    Here at home in the USA, boom times remain in full swing with stock market averages busting out to new highs seemingly day-after-day. Yet, behind the bullish headlines, there seems to be developing a clear pattern of parabolic (terminal) excess within the technology space, a pattern familiar to those market watchers who recall 1999 and 2008.
    Sure enough, for the most part, today’s current valuation metrics for technology stocks are nothing close to the fantasy price-to-eyeball ratios that seemed to capture the imagination of so many when the first internet boom developed in the late 1990s and peaked in March 2000. Yet, today’s market harkens back to a blend of the pre-tech wreck mania vertical blow off patterns and the famous Nifty 50 market of the early 1970s.

    This post was published at FinancialSense on 06/21/2017.

    This entry was posted in Economy and tagged

  • Gold Price Slips vs. Falling Dollar as Oil Bounces, Bank of England Split Boosts ‘Brexit-Hit’ Pound

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Gold prices held near 5-week lows against a falling US Dollar on Wednesday, trading at $1243 per ounce as commodities rallied but world stock markets extended Tuesday’s retreat in New York.
    As Brent crude oil rallied $1 per barrel from yesterday’s 7-month lows near $45, that pulled the EuroStoxx 50 index of major European shares more than 1% lower.
    The British Pound meantime rallied after a split emerged amongst senior Bank of England policymakers over holding or raising UK interest rates from the current all-time record low of 0.25% with 435 billion ($550bn) of quantitative easing bond purchases.
    Check out Global Liquidity Reaching a Tipping Point
    The Euro currency also rallied against the Dollar but held 1 cent below last week’s peak, the highest level since Donald Trump won the US presidential election last November.
    The gold price for Eurozone investors fell below 1115 per ounce, near its lowest level since January.

    This post was published at FinancialSense on 06/21/2017.

    This entry was posted in Politics and tagged

  • “Brazil Now Facing A Major Crisis”: Police Says It Has Evidence President Temer Received Bribes

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Update: and right on time, the Brazilian house speaker confirmed that the worst case scenario – for Temer – is on the table:
    BRAZIL NOW FACING MAJOR CRISIS: HOUSE SPEAKER MAIA BRAZIL JUDGE REJECTS TEMER CRIMINAL COMPLAINT VS JBS’S BATISTA * * *
    Almost exactly one month after Brazil’s stock market crashed, and the Real plunged after the country’s never-ending political drama made a triumphal return following accusations that president Michel Temer had encouraged a “hush money” bribe to former House Speaker Eduardo Cunha in return for not getting dragged into the Carwash scandal, on Tuesday afternoon, Brazil’s federal police force said it has found evidence that the embattled president received bribes to help businesses, Brazil’s O Globo reported.

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 20, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Market Commentary and tagged

  • Asian Metals Market Update: June-20-2017

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Factors which can affect markets
    It should be a technical trade as there is no news. Geopolitical risk will be closely watched. This is the last week before Ramzan ends. Over the past decade there is a big spike in smuggled gold in India after Ramzan. Physical gold premiums can fall after two weeks. (unless gold prices continue to fall). Investors are happy due to continuation of bullish trend in stock markets.
    Trend is down for gold and silver. One needs to look for signs of trend reversal.
    COMEX GOLD AUGUST 2017 – current price $1247.01
    Bullish over $1253.20 with $1260.20 and $1268.70 as price target
    Bearish below $1249.10 with $1244.40 and $1237.10 as price target.
    Neutral Zone between: $1249.10-$1253.20

    This post was published at GoldSeek on 20 June 2017.

    This entry was posted in Geopolitics and tagged

  • What Is the Market Telling Us?

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    The entire global economy now depends on this stripped-of-information “market” for its stability. Ho-hum, another day, another record high in the S&P 500 (SPX). What is this market telling us? If you’re long, the market is screaming “you’re a genius!”: *** But other than that, what else is the market telling us? Is it telling us anything about the real-world economy and the open market for equities based in that real-world economy? Before we can answer “what is the market telling us?” we must first ask, “what can the market tell us?” That is, what is the current market capable of communicating? This is the key question, for as we all know central banks have intervened in the market in an unprecedented fashion for over eight years. Central banks have transformed stock markets into signaling devices that are intended to boost the perception of increasing wealth, whether earnings and productivity are actually increasing or not.

    This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Economy and tagged

  • (Cape) Fear! Shiller CAPE Ratio At 1929 Black Tuesday Levels (Probability Of Further Rate Cuts Low)

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Robert Shiller, the Nobel Laureate in economics from Yale University, has a cyclically-adjusted price-earnings ratio termed the CAPE ratio. And it just rose to the same level as Black Tuesday of 1929, the famous stock market crash.

    This post was published at Wall Street Examiner by Anthony B Sanders ‘ June 19, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corporate and tagged

  • “Probably Nothing”

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    For the first time since September 2001, Robert Shiller’s CAPE Ratio measure of stock market valuation has topped 30x…
    (…and yes, we know, we “don’t get it” and “this time is different” and “the world is a changed place” and so on…)
    Time will tell…

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 19, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corporate and tagged

  • Bi-Weekly Economic Review: Has The Fed Heard Of Amazon?

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    This is a syndicated repost courtesy of Alhambra Investments. To view original, click here. Reposted with permission.
    The economic surprises keep piling up on the negative side of the ledger as the Fed persists in tightening policy or at least pretending that they are. If a rate changes in the wilderness can the market hear it? Outside of the stock market one would be hard pressed to find evidence of the effectiveness of all the Fed’s extraordinary policies of the last decade. Even there, I’m not sure QE is actually the culprit that has pushed valuations to, once again, incredible heights. I’m also not sure exactly what the Fed is trying to accomplish and I don’t think it really does either. All evidence points to the nonsensical idea that interest rates need to be raised so the Fed will have room to cut them later. Unfortunately, that is as logical as monetary policy gets these days.
    I may not know what’s going on and Janet Yellen surely doesn’t but the bond market usually does. And unlike Yellen we here at Alhambra do pay attention to what the bond market is telling us. It isn’t a tale of full employment and imminent wage and cost push inflation. It also isn’t a tale of robust growth that needs reining in lest it get out of control and put too many people back to work. So, we are left scratching our collective heads trying to figure out what exactly is motivating Yellen & Co. to try and slow down an economy moving at the speed of a sloth.

    This post was published at Wall Street Examiner by Joseph Y. Calhoun ‘ June 18, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Government and tagged

  • Global Equity Markets Firmer As Oil Stabilizes, Greece Gets Bailout Money

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    (Kitco News) – World stock markets were mostly higher overnight. Crude oil prices are firmer today, which helped out the equities. Also, Greece’s creditors approved another release of bailout money for the indebted country, which assuaged European investors. U. S. stock indexes are pointed toward slightly higher openings when the New York day session begins.
    Gold prices are modestly up in pre-U. S. market trading, on a technical and short-covering bounce from solid selling pressure seen earlier this week.
    In overnight news, Russia’s central bank cut its key interest rate by 25 basis points. The Russian ruble rallied on the news.
    The Bank of Japan held its regular monetary policy meeting Friday and made no major changes in its policy.
    The Euro zone’s consumer price index for May was reported down 0.1% from April and up 1.4% from a year ago. The numbers were right in line with market expectations but down from the European Central Bank’s target rate of around 2.0% annual inflation.

    This post was published at Wall Street Examiner on June 16, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Banking and tagged

  • Return of the Gold Bear?

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    It was exactly one month ago we discussed our posture as a ‘bearish Gold bull.’
    The gold mining sector hit a historic low nearly 18 months ago but this new cycle has struggled to gain traction as metals prices have stagnated while the stock market and the US Dollar have trended higher. Unfortunately recent technical and fundamental developments argue that precious metals could come under serious pressure in the weeks and months ahead.
    First let me start with Gold’s fundamentals, which turned bearish a few months ago and could remain so through the fall. As we have argued, Gold is inversely correlated to real interest rates. Gold rises when real rates fall and Gold falls when real rates rise.
    Real interest rates bottomed in February and have trended higher ever since. As we know, the rate of inflation has peaked and is declining. Meanwhile, the fed funds rate has increased while bond yields have remained stable. The real fed funds rate and the real 5-year yield have increased by 1% in recent months. If inflation falls by another 0.5% and the fed funds rate is increased by another quarter point, then the real fed funds rate would be positive by the end of the year. That would mark a 2% increase inside of 10 months.

    This post was published at GoldSeek on 18 June 2017.

    This entry was posted in Banking and tagged

  • San Francisco Bay Area Sheds Jobs and Workers

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Commercial and residential real estate bubbles choke the economy. The upper bounds of hype and craziness have been reached.
    The San Francisco Bay Area has seen an astounding jobs boom since the Great Recession. The tsunami of global liquidity that washed over it after the Great Recession, central-bank QE and zero-interest-rate policies that sent investors chasing blindly after risk, a blistering no-holds-barred startup bubble with the craziest valuations, one of the greatest stock market bubbles ever – whatever caused the boom, it created one of the craziest housing bubbles ever, a restaurant scene to dream of, traffic jams to have nightmares over, and hundreds of thousands of jobs. But it’s over.
    In May, employment in San Francisco dropped to 542,600 jobs, the lowest since June 2016, according to the data released on Friday by the California Employment Development Department. The employment peak was in December 2016 at 547,200.
    The labor force in the City fell to 557,600. That’s below March 2016! This confirms a slew of other data and anecdotal evidence: People and businesses are leaving. It’s too expensive. They’re voting with their feet.

    This post was published at Wolf Street by Wolf Richter ‘ Jun 17, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Economy and tagged

  • Monetary Madness and Rabbit Consumption

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Down the Rabbit Hole
    ‘The hurrier I go, the behinder I get,’ is oft attributed to the White Rabbit from Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland. Where this axiom appears within the text of the story is a mystery. But we suspect the White Rabbit must utter it about the time Alice follows him down the rabbit hole.
    No doubt, today’s wage earner knows what it means to work harder, faster, and better, while slip sliding behind. However, for many wage earners the reasons why may be somewhat mysterious. At first glance, they may look around and quickly scapegoat foreigners for their economic woes.
    Yet like Wonderland, things are often not as they first appear. When it comes to today’s financial markets, there is hardly a connection to the real economy at all. Stock markets are just off record highs, yet 6 in 10 Americans don’t have $500 to cover an unexpected bill.

    This post was published at Acting-Man on June 17, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Economy and tagged

  • The foreign business incentives in this country can help double your income.

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Yesterday I spent all afternoon meeting with government officials here in the Philippines, and I’m still in shock. I’ll explain –
    About a year and a half ago I purchased a fairly large manufacturing business that is oddly enough based in Australia.
    It’s been a fantastic investment so far, primarily because it generates so much cashflow relative to the price I paid.
    With big public companies listed on a major stock market, it’s not uncommon to pay 20x, 50x, even more than 100x a company’s annual profits.
    For example, as I write to you early in the morning here in Manila right now, Amazon’s stock sells for 180x its annual profits.
    In other words, if you were theoretically to acquire 100% of Amazon’s shares, at current levels it would take you 180 years to recoup your investment.
    (This presumes you put all the profits in your pocket, but doesn’t account for the effects of dividend taxation.)
    Obviously most investors expect Amazon to keep growing.
    But even if Amazon’s earnings were to grow at an annual rate of 25% per year (which would be unprecedented), it would still take almost two decades to recoup your investment.

    This post was published at Sovereign Man on June 16, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Government and tagged

  • Stock Prices Fall as Senate Passes Russia Sanctions Bill

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    In Dow Jones news today, stock prices fell as the Senate passed a bill that would place new sanctions on Russia.
    Here are the numbers from Thursday for the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq:
    Now here’s a closer look at today’s most important market events and stocks, plus Friday’s economic calendar.
    The Five Top Stock Market Stories for Thursday
    European finance ministers debated another round of debt relief for the embattled Greek economy and decided to offer a bailout of 8.5 billion euros ($9.5 billion). Greece’s current bailout program is the third effort by international finance leaders since the nation fell into economic calamity in 2010. Crude oil prices cratered and hit a seven-month low on news of a huge spike in U. S. gasoline inventory levels and expectations that OPEC will not be able to balance supply and demand. Crude oil prices are now off more than 12% since May 25. The WTI crude oil price today fell 0.7%. Brent crude dipped 0.2%.

    This post was published at Wall Street Examiner on June 15, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Government and tagged

  • “It’s A Perfect Storm Of Negativity” – Veteran Trader Rejoins The Dark Side

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,
    After many months of fighting all the naysayers predicting the next big stock market crash, I am finally succumbing to the seductive story of the dark side, and getting negative on equities. I am often early, so maybe this means the rally is about to accelerate to the upside. I am willing to take that chance. It would be just like me to pound the table on the long side, and then abandon the trade right before it goes parabolic.

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 15, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Market Commentary and tagged