Early morning in Europe and the Western Hemisphere were looking downright dreary to open the week's financial escapades, until buyers (central banks) emerged from the shadows (crypts), quickly erasing concerns over China's new rules to crimp the burgeoning shadow banking uprising and the failure of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to form a coalition government.
While futures were down sharply - especially on the European news - they were quickly corrected. China's markets quickly went from negative, staging a day-long rally, while European bourses were mostly positive and US stocks rallied sharply from the opening bell.
However, the euphoria flagged in the US as the session wore on, with stocks finishing off their highs of the day. Still, the results were much more cheerful than what might have happened if markets and investors were left alone, barring the blatant interventionism that seems to pervade trading in all markets.
The new paradigm is such that stocks cannot fail, but only go higher, valuations be damned, while gold and silver are routinely taken out to the woodshed for a weekly beating, such as occurred this morning, prior to the opening bell on Wall Street and throughout the day.
The setup isn't all so new at all. Since 2012, gold and silver have been mercilessly suppressed, to the point at which some staunch supporters are rethinking their love for shiny metals. This is exactly what central bankers wish, that wealth protectors give up and resign themselves to the fiat money regimen, but it is also precisely the time - if one is guided by sound investment stratagems - to begin loading up on what most would be shunning.
In that regard, London-based Glint launched a mobile app today that sets gold sailing into the digital age, offering Glintpay as a means by which to hold gold in a Swiss-based vault with the ability to spend one's holdings via a complementary MasterCard.
The app, which is available for download through the Apple App Store, works on iPhones and iPads using Apple's iOS operating system and is promising to provide quick and easy debit access to gold and a host of other currencies, with millions of locations worldwide accepting MasterCard.
How well the start-up will fare is an open question, but it does raise an interesting alternative to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which have witnessed monumental growth over the past six months and continue to raise eyebrows in the conventional banking universe.
The world is at a crossroads in terms of currencies. Trust in the debt-slavery central bank system continues to wane in various places as the rise of cryptos offers a glimpse of a possible future and precious metal devotees cling to long-held beliefs in money that is backed by physical assets.
Currency events are historically long-winded affairs, taking years or decades in which to sort themselves out. The ongoing forays between fiat, crypto, and physical seems to have gained some momentum today.
Investors with an eye on the global financial landscape would be wise to hold some of each, allocating more toward the digital and physical as events warrant as old systems are dying and may have been dealt an unrecoverable blow during the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-09.
At the Close, Monday, November 20, 2017:
Dow: 23,430.33, +72.09 (+0.31%)
NASDAQ: 6,790.71, +7.92 (+0.12%)
S&P 500: 2,582.14, +3.29 (+0.13%)
NYSE Composite: 12,320.77, +17.88 (+0.15%)
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Monday, November 20, 2017
Thursday, April 21, 2016
With Central Banks Losing Control, Markets Begin Wild Gyrations
In the aftermath of the Deustche Bank revelations that they and other banking concerns engaged in explicit manipulation of gold and silver prices and markets (assuredly, among others), and in anticipation of various central bank announcements, proclamations and policy nonsense, as of today, markets seem to have become somewhat disjointed and erratic.
Witness the madness in precious metals that began in earnest with the opening of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) daily gold fix priced in yuan, the price of gold shot up $20 when ECB President Mario Draghi left European markets with no new monetary ammunition, and then retreated without reason, ostensibly the controllers in the West reacting to the challenge having been thrown down by the Chinese.
It was a somewhat similar condition in the silver price, which whipped up to $17.65 in early morning trading, only to be slammed down moments later on the NYMEX, below $17. The prices of both gold and silver recovered, but the message is clear: the London gold fixers and those in China are at odds over what should be the true price of precious metals.
There is a solution to this, and that would be to allow markets to work, by outlawing naked shorting, bid stuffing on the CME, high frequency trading and other tools of manipulation. Letting the market decide on the price would be a satisfactory conclusion to what is rapidly turning into an economic war zone, but it is also quite possible the opposing parties could begin using actual guns, bullets, warships and bombs to settle their differences. It is evident that the long-established edge of US monetary hegemony, via the dollar as reserve currency, is coming to an end, and with that, the era of unbacked, unsound money (fiat).
The easiest and most prudent advice to investors at this juncture would be to buy gold - and more importantly silver, since it has been so viciously violated by the bankers over the years - as quickly as possible, and in as much quantity as one can reasonably afford.
US stocks also experienced something of a double dip, once in the early trading and again just before and after noon, which ended up being the move of the day, as the Dow suffered its worst day in three weeks, with the major indices backing off from recent highs, promoted via vapid and obfuscated corporate earnings reports. While the media has been largely hushed over first quarter earnings, the truth of the matter is that most companies are not keeping up with projections, though they are beating lowered expectations. Many companies are reporting positive earnings, no doubt, but they are also lower than what they reported in the year-ago period. Once again, gains in stock prices can generally be attributed to easy monetary policy, cartel-like trading (the same big banks that brought us the last financial crash in 2008-09), and an astounding amount of group-think, wherein nobody bothers with fundamental analysis, but relies more on the whims of the moment, otherwise known as momentum trading.
Get ready for more volatility, as more and more students of the markets realize just how distorted the policies of the various powerful central banks have been.
Today's Closing Numbers:
S&P 500: 2,091.48, -10.92 (0.52%)
Dow: 17,982.52, -113.75 (0.63%)
NASDAQ: 4,945.89, -2.24 (0.05%)
Crude Oil 43.43 -1.70% Gold 1,250.10 -0.02% EUR/USD 1.1289 0.00% 10-Yr Bond 1.87 +0.86% Corn 394.00 +1.09% Copper 2.25 +0.07% Silver 17.03 -0.35% Natural Gas 2.06 -0.43% Russell 2000 1,135.77 -0.57% VIX 13.95 +5.05% BATS 1000 20,682.61 0.00% GBP/USD 1.4317 -0.04% USD/JPY 109.4370 +0.02%
Witness the madness in precious metals that began in earnest with the opening of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) daily gold fix priced in yuan, the price of gold shot up $20 when ECB President Mario Draghi left European markets with no new monetary ammunition, and then retreated without reason, ostensibly the controllers in the West reacting to the challenge having been thrown down by the Chinese.
It was a somewhat similar condition in the silver price, which whipped up to $17.65 in early morning trading, only to be slammed down moments later on the NYMEX, below $17. The prices of both gold and silver recovered, but the message is clear: the London gold fixers and those in China are at odds over what should be the true price of precious metals.
There is a solution to this, and that would be to allow markets to work, by outlawing naked shorting, bid stuffing on the CME, high frequency trading and other tools of manipulation. Letting the market decide on the price would be a satisfactory conclusion to what is rapidly turning into an economic war zone, but it is also quite possible the opposing parties could begin using actual guns, bullets, warships and bombs to settle their differences. It is evident that the long-established edge of US monetary hegemony, via the dollar as reserve currency, is coming to an end, and with that, the era of unbacked, unsound money (fiat).
The easiest and most prudent advice to investors at this juncture would be to buy gold - and more importantly silver, since it has been so viciously violated by the bankers over the years - as quickly as possible, and in as much quantity as one can reasonably afford.
US stocks also experienced something of a double dip, once in the early trading and again just before and after noon, which ended up being the move of the day, as the Dow suffered its worst day in three weeks, with the major indices backing off from recent highs, promoted via vapid and obfuscated corporate earnings reports. While the media has been largely hushed over first quarter earnings, the truth of the matter is that most companies are not keeping up with projections, though they are beating lowered expectations. Many companies are reporting positive earnings, no doubt, but they are also lower than what they reported in the year-ago period. Once again, gains in stock prices can generally be attributed to easy monetary policy, cartel-like trading (the same big banks that brought us the last financial crash in 2008-09), and an astounding amount of group-think, wherein nobody bothers with fundamental analysis, but relies more on the whims of the moment, otherwise known as momentum trading.
Get ready for more volatility, as more and more students of the markets realize just how distorted the policies of the various powerful central banks have been.
Today's Closing Numbers:
S&P 500: 2,091.48, -10.92 (0.52%)
Dow: 17,982.52, -113.75 (0.63%)
NASDAQ: 4,945.89, -2.24 (0.05%)
Crude Oil 43.43 -1.70% Gold 1,250.10 -0.02% EUR/USD 1.1289 0.00% 10-Yr Bond 1.87 +0.86% Corn 394.00 +1.09% Copper 2.25 +0.07% Silver 17.03 -0.35% Natural Gas 2.06 -0.43% Russell 2000 1,135.77 -0.57% VIX 13.95 +5.05% BATS 1000 20,682.61 0.00% GBP/USD 1.4317 -0.04% USD/JPY 109.4370 +0.02%
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Money, Money Everywhere, But Not a Buck to Lend
The world is awash in liquidity, but nobody seems to have any money.
At least that is the case for the 90% of Americans - and probably 95% of the rest of the world - that don't have access to easy money from central banks around the world.
Consider today's action by the Bank of Japan's new finance minister Haruhiko Kuroda, pladging unprecedented monetary stimulus by doubling Japan's central bank balance sheet by the end of 2014 through outright purchases of government bonds, ranging anywhere from short term notes to the 40-year Japanese bond.
The move puts Japan on a par with the mad money printer, Ben Bernanke, and in the same camp as the ECB's Mario Draghi, who vowed last year to do anything possible to save the Euro.
Such policies, like the Fed's $85 billion monthly purchases of treasuries and MBS (near-worthless), would have been unheard of just ten years ago, but today they are accepted as matter-of-fact as the bank heads continue trying to prop up zombie banks that have been bankrupt since 2008 (1992 in Japan's case) and governments which made promises to their people in the form of health care and retirement benefits that are slowly but surely bankrupting their entire nations.
These policies are doomed to fail, as they inflate various economies, crushing the purchasing power of the average citizen to a point at which many are priced out of mere survival. Ergo, the 49 million Americans receiving food stamps, unprecedented numbers on disability or welfare, programs which strip away the dignity of the individual, making them wards of the state.
Governments worldwide cannot balance their budgets due to these absurd entitlement programs, yet common people go about their business like the legendary "Annie Hall," tripping through life, dismissing any pitfalls with a cheery "la-dee-da."
Wall Street and the markets in Japan, London and Europe are no different. Obvious economic headwinds, like today's massive miss on first time unemployment claims (385,000 on expectations of 345K) are simply shrugged off as investors have no other place to put money to work but in risky stocks, though the correct strategy in times of impending hyper-inflation would be to park in cash and tangible assets such as land, gold, silver and productive machinery, because today's prices will look like peanuts compared to what people will be paying once the inflation tiger is unleashed.
Thus far, central bankers have been lucky. Inflation hasn't been all that ferocious, though spikes in oil, gas, food and other commodities have already been notable. Keeping inflation in line has been the stagnant to negative growth of incomes. With less money, people simply can't afford to splurge, and if less money is chasing the same amount of goods, prices will remain relatively stable, though that certainly cannot be guaranteed with the incredible amount of liquidity being force-fed into the system.
Also aiding their efforts is the fact that most of the inflation has been in stocks, which are ridiculously priced. All this may be coming to an abrupt ending with first quarter earnings reports. Many companies are just barely making their estimates even though the bar continues to be lowered. At some point, investors will demand more, along the lines of 15% year-over-year earnings acceleration, higher dividends and better margins, all the things a healthy market economy would normally expect.
Earnings begin trickling out on Monday, but before that, Friday's non-farm payroll report for March needs to be presented, and, from the looks of the close today, nobody is really sweating that.
After the last three weeks of unemployment figures, however, maybe they should.
Dow 14,606.11, +55.76 (0.38%)
NASDAQ 3,224.98, +6.38 (0.20%)
S&P 500 1,559.98, +6.29 (0.40%)
NYSE Composite 9,027.83, +44.44 (0.49%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,470,237,625
NYSE Volume 3,566,827,500
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4003-2357
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 123-65
WTI crude oil: 93.26, -1.19
Gold: 1,552.40, -1.10
Silver: 26.77, -0.03
At least that is the case for the 90% of Americans - and probably 95% of the rest of the world - that don't have access to easy money from central banks around the world.
Consider today's action by the Bank of Japan's new finance minister Haruhiko Kuroda, pladging unprecedented monetary stimulus by doubling Japan's central bank balance sheet by the end of 2014 through outright purchases of government bonds, ranging anywhere from short term notes to the 40-year Japanese bond.
The move puts Japan on a par with the mad money printer, Ben Bernanke, and in the same camp as the ECB's Mario Draghi, who vowed last year to do anything possible to save the Euro.
Such policies, like the Fed's $85 billion monthly purchases of treasuries and MBS (near-worthless), would have been unheard of just ten years ago, but today they are accepted as matter-of-fact as the bank heads continue trying to prop up zombie banks that have been bankrupt since 2008 (1992 in Japan's case) and governments which made promises to their people in the form of health care and retirement benefits that are slowly but surely bankrupting their entire nations.
These policies are doomed to fail, as they inflate various economies, crushing the purchasing power of the average citizen to a point at which many are priced out of mere survival. Ergo, the 49 million Americans receiving food stamps, unprecedented numbers on disability or welfare, programs which strip away the dignity of the individual, making them wards of the state.
Governments worldwide cannot balance their budgets due to these absurd entitlement programs, yet common people go about their business like the legendary "Annie Hall," tripping through life, dismissing any pitfalls with a cheery "la-dee-da."
Wall Street and the markets in Japan, London and Europe are no different. Obvious economic headwinds, like today's massive miss on first time unemployment claims (385,000 on expectations of 345K) are simply shrugged off as investors have no other place to put money to work but in risky stocks, though the correct strategy in times of impending hyper-inflation would be to park in cash and tangible assets such as land, gold, silver and productive machinery, because today's prices will look like peanuts compared to what people will be paying once the inflation tiger is unleashed.
Thus far, central bankers have been lucky. Inflation hasn't been all that ferocious, though spikes in oil, gas, food and other commodities have already been notable. Keeping inflation in line has been the stagnant to negative growth of incomes. With less money, people simply can't afford to splurge, and if less money is chasing the same amount of goods, prices will remain relatively stable, though that certainly cannot be guaranteed with the incredible amount of liquidity being force-fed into the system.
Also aiding their efforts is the fact that most of the inflation has been in stocks, which are ridiculously priced. All this may be coming to an abrupt ending with first quarter earnings reports. Many companies are just barely making their estimates even though the bar continues to be lowered. At some point, investors will demand more, along the lines of 15% year-over-year earnings acceleration, higher dividends and better margins, all the things a healthy market economy would normally expect.
Earnings begin trickling out on Monday, but before that, Friday's non-farm payroll report for March needs to be presented, and, from the looks of the close today, nobody is really sweating that.
After the last three weeks of unemployment figures, however, maybe they should.
Dow 14,606.11, +55.76 (0.38%)
NASDAQ 3,224.98, +6.38 (0.20%)
S&P 500 1,559.98, +6.29 (0.40%)
NYSE Composite 9,027.83, +44.44 (0.49%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,470,237,625
NYSE Volume 3,566,827,500
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4003-2357
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 123-65
WTI crude oil: 93.26, -1.19
Gold: 1,552.40, -1.10
Silver: 26.77, -0.03
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Markets Continue Dull Streak; Germany Slow Go on Gold Move
How dull is this market?
The Dow Jones Industrials hit their lows of the day just minutes into trading, losing 66 points, then rallied off that until stabilizing - though still in the red - around 11:00 am ET.
From that point until the close, the index traded in a range of just 25 points.
This is what happens when headline-scanning algos do 80% of the trading. When there's no news, nothing happens. So, if you're trading on fundamentals - things like price-earnings ratios, comparative advantage, free cash flow, etc. - you can just sit and wait until your particular stock of choice latches itself to a broad rally or makes some headline-grabbing news.
And, if that's what's become of our "free" markets, good luck, because the computers will beat you every time. They can find and scan a headline, react and trade in a matter of seconds, or, in much less the time an average web page takes to load.
Now, is there any reason at all for individual investors to trade stocks? One would believe no.
About all that was not moving the market today were a series of equally dull economic reports, like the CPI, at 0.0%. There's no inflation (really?) and no deflation, which, unless one knew better, would be defined as stagflation (or maybe lackflation).
The NAHB Housing Market Index remained steady at 47, whatever that means; industrial production bumped up 0.3%, which was down from last month's reading of an increase of 1.0%, and capacity utilization improved from 78.7% to 78.8%.
Outside of Goldman Sachs' (GS) huge earnings and revenue beat and JP Morgan's (JPM) narrow beat ex-one-time-charges (but of course), what may have put a pall over the session was the World Bank lowering its global growth (that's a joke, son) projection from 3.0% to 2.4%.
Seriously, the sloped-browed, slack-jawed dunces at the World Bank don't have a crystal ball, but, for some unholy reason, people believe they know what they're doing. Some of us are dubious. But, then again, some of us don't trust anything that comes out of the mouth of politicians or bankers or even stock analysts.
Ho-hum. It seems even the bright-minded Germans, who shook things up a little yesterday by wanting some of their gold back, really don't want it all that badly, after all. GATA reports that Germany will take all of seven years to repatriate some 300 tons of its gold from the Federal Reserve in New York. It will likely take a shorter period of time to remove all of its gold - 374 tons - from the vaults in Paris, but it plans on keeping whatever is in the London vaults there indefinitely, amounting of 13% of all its gold.
The plan is to hold 50% of its gold at home, the rest in London and New York. La-de-dah.
Dow 13,511.08, -23.81 (0.18%)
NASDAQ 3,117.54, +6.76 (0.22%)
S&P 500 1,472.57, +0.23 (0.02%)
NYSE Composite 8,710.22, -22.88 (0.26%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,648,059,375
NYSE Volume 3,198,232,750
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2775-3605
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 263-10
WTI crude oil: 94.24, +0.96
Gold: 1,683.20, -0.70
Silver: 31.54, +0.013
The Dow Jones Industrials hit their lows of the day just minutes into trading, losing 66 points, then rallied off that until stabilizing - though still in the red - around 11:00 am ET.
From that point until the close, the index traded in a range of just 25 points.
This is what happens when headline-scanning algos do 80% of the trading. When there's no news, nothing happens. So, if you're trading on fundamentals - things like price-earnings ratios, comparative advantage, free cash flow, etc. - you can just sit and wait until your particular stock of choice latches itself to a broad rally or makes some headline-grabbing news.
And, if that's what's become of our "free" markets, good luck, because the computers will beat you every time. They can find and scan a headline, react and trade in a matter of seconds, or, in much less the time an average web page takes to load.
Now, is there any reason at all for individual investors to trade stocks? One would believe no.
About all that was not moving the market today were a series of equally dull economic reports, like the CPI, at 0.0%. There's no inflation (really?) and no deflation, which, unless one knew better, would be defined as stagflation (or maybe lackflation).
The NAHB Housing Market Index remained steady at 47, whatever that means; industrial production bumped up 0.3%, which was down from last month's reading of an increase of 1.0%, and capacity utilization improved from 78.7% to 78.8%.
Outside of Goldman Sachs' (GS) huge earnings and revenue beat and JP Morgan's (JPM) narrow beat ex-one-time-charges (but of course), what may have put a pall over the session was the World Bank lowering its global growth (that's a joke, son) projection from 3.0% to 2.4%.
Seriously, the sloped-browed, slack-jawed dunces at the World Bank don't have a crystal ball, but, for some unholy reason, people believe they know what they're doing. Some of us are dubious. But, then again, some of us don't trust anything that comes out of the mouth of politicians or bankers or even stock analysts.
Ho-hum. It seems even the bright-minded Germans, who shook things up a little yesterday by wanting some of their gold back, really don't want it all that badly, after all. GATA reports that Germany will take all of seven years to repatriate some 300 tons of its gold from the Federal Reserve in New York. It will likely take a shorter period of time to remove all of its gold - 374 tons - from the vaults in Paris, but it plans on keeping whatever is in the London vaults there indefinitely, amounting of 13% of all its gold.
The plan is to hold 50% of its gold at home, the rest in London and New York. La-de-dah.
Dow 13,511.08, -23.81 (0.18%)
NASDAQ 3,117.54, +6.76 (0.22%)
S&P 500 1,472.57, +0.23 (0.02%)
NYSE Composite 8,710.22, -22.88 (0.26%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,648,059,375
NYSE Volume 3,198,232,750
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2775-3605
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 263-10
WTI crude oil: 94.24, +0.96
Gold: 1,683.20, -0.70
Silver: 31.54, +0.013
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