by Sonali Basak and Agnel Philip
Bloomberg.com
Loews Corp., the holding company run by New York’s Tisch family, was able to counter low bond yields and stock market volatility in the first half of this year with gold-related investments that doubled in value.
Second-quarter net investment income at Loews climbed to $56 million from $7 million a year earlier, the company said in a statement Monday.
“You die by the sword, you live by the sword,” Chief Executive Officer Jim Tisch said in a conference call discussing results. “We had, for a number of quarters, even years, suffered with gold investments. What’s happened in this most recent quarter is gold investments came to life.”
On Friday July 29th, 2016, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released the second-quarter GDP figures and revisions for prior quarters. At a disappointing annualized growth rate of only 1.20%, second quarter GDP widely missed consensus expectations of 2.50% growth. Coincidently the current 1-year average growth rate has risen at the same 1.20% and that annualized growth rate has declined for five quarters in a row.
The Personal Savings Rate is a rather important economic indication. Because it is derived from the difference between income and spending, it can tell us a great deal about the state of the economy from the consumer perspective. Unfortunately, nobody can say with any degree of confidence what the savings rate is right now, or even what it has been over the past few years.
Europe Under Attack?
Markets are becoming increasingly chaotic as we move deeper into the fiat endgame. It is far too late to permit the corrective forces of deflation to purge the system of excesses. If this were allowed to happen the system would rapidly go into a state of “cardiac arrest” leading to a credit lockup, ATMs not working, the food distribution system breaking down, widespread rioting and looting, martial law being imposed and the growing risk of the citadels of government being stormed in outright revolution, so that much of the Western world ends up like Venezuela right now.
$278bn and the market is still disappointed! Despite the package provided by the Japanese government today late futures trading has followed the weaker cash market and extended losses by another 2%. Confidence is slightly dented as the market was hoping we would see the helicopter approach and that is why the market continued to sink and the JPY approaches the 100 level given there is no bazooka to be seen. China was really a side story today, together with the expected RBA rate cut but given all the action concentrated within Japan with Hong Kong restricted by adverse weather conditions.
Jeffrey Gundlach has a message for you.
“That,” I tell the Russian economist, “is quote-of-the-day material.”
IPOs collapse to near-crisis levels even as stocks hover at record
While we have often heard that members of Congress, who are not only exempt from insider trading oversight, are also ardent daytraders we had never seen it in action.
You are being watched…
Brexit presents “unprecedented” opportunities to seal trade deals that are beneficial to both the UK and foreign partners, according to the boss of Britain’s biggest car dealer.
With the dollar tumbling, gold and silver surging and the mining share indexes hitting new multi-year highs, the world may not see a total collapse of global currencies but here is what will get destroyed.
[…] Gold and silver managed to add a little to their recent gains, as risk began to creep back into the internal judgements of traders, who were taking a little of their recent extended gains in riskier assets off the table.
In my latest issue of the Short Seller’s Journal, I predicted a weak showing for July auto sales. Both GM and Ford missed Wall Street’s forecast. With the magic of seasonal adjustments, the industry data overall was presented to show a .7% increase in overall sales vs. June. GM sales dropped 2% and Ford’s sales fell 3%. Again, any overall industry gains can be attributed to mysterious “seasonal adjustments.” June auto sales dropped 3.4% from May.
In Elliott Wave parlance, 3rd waves are the segment of a trend move which provides the strongest market action. This is why we are always on the “lookout” for the set-ups for 3rd waves. Whereas silver has already seen the heart of a 3rd several weeks ago, we now may be setting up for one in the GDX and GLD.
A federal appeals court on Monday said a cache of exceptionally rare gold coins stolen from the U.S. Mint in the 1930s belongs to the U.S. government, not the Pennsylvania family that possessed it for decades.
Asian stock markets fell Wednesday as U.S. oil entered a bear market, and a stronger yen dragged Japanese equities lower.
George Orwell didn’t have Ken Rogoff in mind when he said that some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them. But he may as well have…
Gold:1364.40 up $13.00
Sweeping rhetoric about a future with free (or debt-free) college education may be capturing national attention, but a wonky government rule making process that could wipe away current student loans for thousands is quietly playing out.