Thursday, June 30, 2016

Stocks Regain Nearly All Brexit Losses, But Silver Tells Another Tale

While the maintainers of the status quo managed to nearly erase all of the losses from Friday and Monday due to Brexit, there is an outlier which Money Daily has referenced in the past, and its name is silver.

Gold being the choice of elitists and very rich people worldwide, it gets most of the attention in the financial press, after stocks, of course. Silver is regarded largely as an afterthought by the all-powerful, but it has been, throughout human history, an essential element in commerce, trade and capital accumulation, and today, it outpaced every other asset class by a wide margin, closing in New York at a very favorable price of $18.695, the best closing price since September of 2014.

While other assets have been languishing or found range-bound, silver has forged ahead by a nifty 35% year-to-date.

As a monetary metal, silver has no equal in terms of affordability and value for the common man or woman. The recent rise will no doubt spur further demand and subsequent gains.

Silver's rise signals a threat to phony fiat money and the monopoly of gold as a store of value. It may also be presaging a new monetary order, one in which the general populace will not be thought of as chattel.

Whoopie!

Brexit Didn't Matter After All:
S&P 500: 2,098.86, +28.09 (1.36%)
Dow: 17,929.99, +235.31 (1.33%)
NASDAQ: 4,842.67, +63.43 (1.33%)

Crude Oil 48.39 -2.99% Gold 1,325.10 -0.14% EUR/USD 1.1101 -0.22% 10-Yr Bond 1.4880 +0.74% Corn 372.75 -2.68% Copper 2.20 +0.87% Silver 18.84 +2.38% Natural Gas 2.92 +2.10% Russell 2000 1,151.92 +1.79% VIX 15.78 -5.17% BATS 1000 20,677.17 0.00% GBP/USD 1.3312 -0.92% USD/JPY 103.2700 +0.34%

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Throwing Caution To The Wind, Stocks Power Higher

Stocks surged worldwide for the second straight day as investors seem determined to make Brexit an afterthought.

They're probably correct in their assessment, as, following the initial panic selling, the reality that an orderly exit from the EU by the UK will be an ongoing process.

Stocks in the US remain largely rangebound, since breaking through to new all-time highs would seem boorish and gaudy, which is why it is completely possible.

With every passing political, emotional, and economic event, the will of investors of equities continues to defy basic common sense and rudimentary risk caution. A side effect, or perhaps a direct one, is that short sellers have been thoroughly routed for the umpteenth time. Covering by shorts has been a bloody bath the past two session.

Mind the Gap.

Carry On.

In case you haven't noticed, with today's gain to 18.38, silver is up a whopping 33% YTD, from a December 31, 2015 close of 13.82.


S&P 500: 2,069.62, +33.53 (1.65%)
Dow: 17,679.34, +269.62 (1.55%)
NASDAQ: 4,778.10, +86.23 (1.84%)

Crude Oil 49.42 +3.28% Gold 1,324.20 +0.48% EUR/USD 1.1101 +0.23% 10-Yr Bond 1.48 +1.10% Corn 383.50 -2.73% Copper 2.19 +0.80% Silver 18.38 +2.74% Natural Gas 2.85 -1.31% Russell 2000 1,131.48 +2.18% VIX 16.90 -9.87% BATS 1000 20,677.17 0.00% GBP/USD 1.3432 +0.76% USD/JPY 102.8385 +0.10%

Reviving a prior feature, here's the Rolling Stones:

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Stocks Rebound From Dramatic Brexit Declines; Trend Not Apparent Yet

Nothing to see here, really, as markets took Tuesday to bounce back from the losses incurred by the Brexit result.

Participants in the market will likely take today's action to suggest that the initial panic was overdone, and that Britain leaving the EU is no big deal.

The truth may be something different from the offered narrative, but it is too early to confirm any kind of trend, although the Dow, in particular, will have to do some heavy lifting to retain its prior range between 17,500 and 18,000.

New all-time highs are still within hailing distance (S&P: 2134; Dow: 18,351; NASDAQ: 5232), though they are already more than a year old, getting stale and beginning to smell moldy.

Caution is still advised when dealing with a global financial system based entirely on the promises and good faith of either governments or central banks, mostly the latter.

Tuesday Turnabout:
S&P 500: 2,036.09, +35.55 (1.78%)
Dow: 17,409.72, +269.48 (1.57%)
NASDAQ: 4,691.87, +97.42 (2.12%)

Crude Oil 47.98 +3.56% Gold 1,314.70 -0.75% EUR/USD 1.1089 +0.61% 10-Yr Bond 1.46 +0.07% Corn 394.00 -0.06% Copper 2.18 +2.56% Silver 17.81 +0.34% Natural Gas 2.88 +5.25% Russell 2000 1,106.86 +1.58% VIX 18.89 -20.80% BATS 1000 20,677.17 0.00% GBP/USD 1.3354 +1.05% USD/JPY 102.6650 +0.76%

Monday, June 27, 2016

Stormy Monday: Brexit Triggering Global Market Chaos

If the financial elites (we're looking at you Fed Governors, ECB ministers, central bankers worldwide) needed a rationale for triggering a cataclysmic collapse of global finance, they may have found their huckleberry in the British vote to leave the European Union, the Brexit, as it has become known.

Since Thursday's astonishing vote by the populace of Great Britain to exit what was once known as the European Common Merket and has morphed into a Hobbesian nightmare of Leviathan proportions known as the European Union, European Commission, European Central Bank and an amalgam of overlapping bureaucratic rules, regulations, guidelines, laws and edicts, a suddenly disunited Europe is making life miserable for masters of finance.

Stocks have been selling off at frantic paces since the verdict of the Brits, with uncertainty the keynote of the ongoing dialogue.

While the NIKKEI responded in heroic fashion on Monday, gaining 357 points, stock indices in Europe and the US were dragged down through the week's opening session, with more on the plate.

Whether Brexit is the absolute catalyst for systemic financial collapse is too early to tell, though it has certainly - to this point - served as an adequate warning shot.

Worth knowing is that the general financial condition of the world's developed and emerging economies has not been right since the first great financial shock of 2008, and efforts to repair what was broken then were akin to bandages applies to a severed artery, with the same result. The bleeding continued, and the patient never really recovered.

For eight years the global financial elites have tried to piece together a working economic narrative, to little avail and now they are faced with disintegration of their seminal project, the EU and the funny money known as euros.

Markets today were trembled by rabid selling, pushing the Dow well below its established range between 17,500 and 18,000, with the bottom falling out in dramatic fashion. All-time highs reached just over a year ago are now being viewed as unattainable, setting in motion the potential for first, a 10% correction, followed by the certainty of a full-blown bear market, which has been a long time coming.

Defining those two terms would be a matter of simplicity, if not for the vagaries of the financial lexicon. A correction may be said to be 10% of "recent" highs, and the same could be said of the bear market reading, but, if losses continue to mount, percentages may be the smallest of worries, since real dollars, euros, yen and yuan will be at stake.

With an already turbulent presidential election already underway, caution would be the preferred method of approaching finances over the following six to eight months. While many ordinary people will no doubt practice frugality and thrift in their affairs, there's some considerable doubt as to how governments and central bankers react to what are, no doubt, challenging times ahead.

Bad Bad Brits and Brexit:
S&P 500: 2,000.54, -36.87 (1.81%)
Dow: 17,140.24, -260.51 (1.50%)
NASDAQ: 4,594.44, -113.54 (2.41%)

Crude Oil 46.71 -1.95% Gold 1,329.90 +0.57% EUR/USD 1.1021 -0.19% 10-Yr Bond 1.46 -7.54% Corn 393.50 -0.19% Copper 2.13 +0.71% Silver 17.78 -0.02% Natural Gas 2.76 +2.41% Russell 2000 1,089.65 -3.36% VIX 23.43 -9.05% BATS 1000 20,677.17 0.00% GBP/USD 1.3218 -1.51% USD/JPY 102.0450 +0.25%

Friday, June 24, 2016

As Britain Votes To Leave European Union, The Establishment Is Losing Control

Just a few days ago, our Fearless Editor, Rick Gagliano, penned a post here at Money Daily espousing the belief that the Brexit/Bremain vote and the US presidential election were sideshows and being overblown in importance by the media. Perhaps it was a faux pas or even a veiled negotiation maneuver designed to keep "remain" voters away from the polls (we doubt the latter to be true). In any case, voters in Great Britain did - in establishment terms - the unthinkable, voted to depart from the European Union, and quite possibly delivered a verdict on the perilous future of the EU.

We now present the post mortem.


All hail Nigel Farage, head of the UKIP party and leader of the "Brexit" movement in Great Britain, for he has brought the nation out from under the Orwellian totalitarianism that is essentially the bloated bureaucracy of the European Union, and unshackled the common Briton from enslavement to the status quo.

Here is what Farage said as the tally was coming in, looking favorable for Britain exit from the EU:
If the predictions now are right, this will be a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people. We have fought against the multinationals, we have fought against the big merchant banks, we have fought against big politics, we have fought against lies, corruption and deceit. And today honesty, decency and belief in nation, I think now is going to win. And we will have done it without having to fight, without a single bullet being fired…. Win or lose this battle tonight, we will win this war, we will get our country back, we will get our independence back and we will get our borders back.

Having fought the good fight as an MEP and a representative to the European Parliament for nearly two decades and yesterday, Farege's unwavering rhetoric for freedom and against oppression struck the first salvo for the people against the leading technocratic superstate of the EU, headquartered in Brussels.

For Farage, the victory may have greater consequences. With PM David Cameron admitting defeat and promising to step down come October, Farage figures to be a natural candidate for the vacated post of Prime Minister. Already the mainstream press has put the face of Boris Johnson, former mayor of London, front and center, ahead of Farage, who has said openly that he doesn't want to be Britain's PM.

That battle has a long way to go, but, for now, a rundown of just what Brexit has meant to markets around the world.

The Final Tally:
Leave
Vote share 51.9%
Votes 17,410,742 Votes

Remain
Vote share 48.1%
Votes 16,141,241 Votes

Stocks indices around the world were pounded:
ASIA:
Nikkei 225: 14,952.02, -1,286.33 (-7.92%)
Hang Seng Index: 20,259.13, -609.21 (-2.92%)
SSE Composite Index: 2,854.29, -37.67 (-1.30%)
Straits Times Index: 2,735.39, -58.46 (-2.09%)
S&P/ASX 200: 5,113.20, -167.50 (-3.17%)

EUROPE:
FTSE 100: 6,138.69, -199.41 (-3.15%)
DAX: 9,557.16, -699.87 (-6.82%)
CAC 40: 4,106.73, -359.17 (-8.04%)
EURO STOXX 50 Index: 2,776.09, -261.77 (-8.62%)
EURONEXT 100: 819.99, -59.09 (-6.72%)

Some other interesting notes from early after the voting:
British pound falls as much as 11 percent to $1.3229, weakest since 1985
Yield on 10-year Treasuries drops 29 basis points to 1.46 percent, set for biggest daily decline since 2009
New York crude oil retreats 5.1 percent to $47.56 a barrel, poised for biggest loss since February
Gold rallies as much as 8.1 percent to $1,358.54 an ounce, highest since March 2014

By the end of trading in the US, the day's damage had been assessed, though it was hardly what anybody would call a bloodbath. After all, this was only the first salvo against the establishment, though it does set in motion a complete disintegration of the EU and all of its strictures, laws, rules, regulations and burdensome bureaucracy.

For Americans, it's a good day to be a supporter of Donald Trump for the presidency. Much of what Mr. Trump has been campaigned for was contained in the Brexit platform: an end to open immigration, more civil liberties for common people, smaller federal government, less regulation, lower taxes, more power to people and localities (state's rights in the US).

While the damage to stocks was minimized, the press fell all about itself in once again over-hyping the damage. Britain and her people will not vanish from the earth. New trade arrangements will be made with the countries still remaining in the EU, but it is notable that more than a few EU member states are now calling for exit votes by the people, especially in France, Spain, Italy, the Czeck Republic, Hungary, and elsewhere.

The word on the European Union: Done. It's now become not a matter of if the EU will disintegrate, but when, and how. Those will be the real fireworks. But, between then and now, expect the establishment status quo to fight like mad dogs to retain and enhance their positions of power and prestige. In the end, they too will fail.

US stocks got mangled, with a hefty drop at the open and further displeasure for bulls in the late afternoon, with the Dow - just one day after it broke through the 18,000 upper barrier - closing below 17,500, the long-standing support threshold, on heavy volume. Losses were widespread; banks and financial stocks took the worst of it.

The Dow finished the week lower for the third time in the last four; the S&P and NASDAQ each notched their third straight week of decline.

US Stocks Got Socked:
S&P 500: 2,037.41, -75.91 (3.59%)
Dow: 17,400.75, -610.32 (3.39%)
NASDAQ: 4,707.98, -202.06 (4.12%)

Crude Oil 47.57 -5.07% Gold 1,319.10 +4.43% EUR/USD 1.1118 +0.13% 10-Yr Bond 1.58 -9.20% Corn 391.50 -1.57% Copper 2.11 -2.27% Silver 17.77 +2.40% Natural Gas 2.70 -1.32% Russell 2000 1,127.54 -3.81% VIX 25.76 +49.33% BATS 1000 20,677.17 0.00% GBP/USD 1.3684 +0.06% USD/JPY 102.2550 0.00%

For the Week:
Dow: -274.41 (-1.55%)
S&P 500: -33.81 (-1.63)
NASDAQ: -92.36 (1.92)