by Nadeem Walayat
Market Oracle
The supposed great bear market of 2016 has relentlessly trended in the WRONG direction as each hope that the bears clung to once more resolved in another ramping higher of stock prices. The latest best hope being the Fed meeting that was meant to deliver bear market apocalypse and most recently Yellen yelling that the Fed is in no hurry to raise US interest rates that keeps catching market participants by surprise. This despite near 2 months ago we saw the BoJ panic with negative interest rates, and then earlier this month the ECB also panic with negative interest rates!
I’m not sure which is more off the rails: the stock market bubble that is being inflated or the Chairman of the of the organization that is doing the inflating:
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
We just interviewed the legendary libertarian investor Doug Casey and received a good deal of insight and common sense in the half hour we spent with him on economic and financial matters.
Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Well, the crowd all scrambled, looking for cover as lightning struck near the ballpark yesterday… Soon the stadium was empty, except for me and Jerry and a few others that thought there would be a chance the storm might skip past us… But no, that didn’t happen and soon raindrops the size of quarters were coming down, and the game was cancelled in the 3rd inning.. UGH! Not the way I wanted to end spring training games for me! Oh well, it’s Florida, right? Yes greets me this morning with their song: Yours Is No Disgrace… Yes, was one of those bands that you wanted to listen to with headphones on, so you didn’t miss any music coming from them!
Right now I’m on a Metro North train heading the NYC. I’ve been invited to sit on an advisory council at the UN on building a sustainable energy future.
Former top bank regulator Professor William Black says there is no hiding the cesspool that is Wall Street. Dr. Black says, “People on Wall Street agree that the system is rigged. You get them into a bar, they will say the same thing. When Bernie Sanders says the business plan of Wall Street is fraud, that’s simply an accurate, objective fact. That is their key profit center . . . and it’s not just here. The United States has been in a competition with the United Kingdom (UK) for decades now on this race to the bottom with the City of London and Wall Street. The UK Parliamentary Inquiry, which is run by the Tories, found as a fact that . . . all of the retail profits of the largest banks in the United Kingdom came from the deliberate or ‘mis-selling’ of products to customers. . . . They deliberately ripped off entrepreneurs. They deliberately ripped off their customers, and the Tories found it represented all of their retail profits. . . . You are talking in the range of $80 billion.”
How many startups are empty shells filled with glitzy PR designed to appeal to VC newbies?
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know. Nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV’s “Judge Judy,” is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II; one-third did not know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal. But it is a little mystery why so many college students are illiterate, innumerate and resistant to understanding. Let’s look at it.
From the beginning of this election season, I have been highly skeptical of the odds Nate Silver has placed on various candidates winning various primaries.
Janet Yellen offered up her best impression of a dove Tuesday. In other words, the Federal Reserve chairwoman stressed her intent to gradually lift benchmark interest rates off ultralow levels.
What’s the world coming to when one of the biggest, oldest insurance companies on the planet decides that gold — yes, gold — is its own best insurance against monetary disaster?
Gold got some lift from Yellen’s latest, unmitigated drivel, and although the rally accomplished little from a technical standpoint, it gave bulls something to shoot for as the week plods along.
In the view of John Tamny — an editor at Forbes and RealClearMarkets — economics as it is usually studied and taught in universities is unnecessarily complicated. The basic truths of economics are simple and require no difficult mathematics to understand. Readers will be reminded of Hazlitt’s great Economics in One Lesson.
Dreading “volatility” only on the way down.
Movies are used to set official stories in stone, and a movie is going to be made about the heroic capture of a badly wounded 19 year old kid, not old enough to buy a beer, who, despite being shot up and severely wounded, is alleged to have written a confession in the dark on the side of a boat under which he was hiding to escape execution. Apparently, the 10,000 troops who violated the US Constitution and searched the houses of a shutdown Boston without warrants are going to be credited for “saving America from terrorism.”
Most markets were undecided on which way to play ahead of today’s main event, and so moves were light and limited. Asia saw all core indices tussle between black and red, and with the exception of China all closed pretty much unchanged. Shanghai closed down 1.3% but that was after a late recovery rally at the close. In late U.S. trading, we have seen China 300 (futures) follow the pack and is currently +0.9% higher than its earlier cash close.
Some countries have consistently strong finances and stable currencies. Others are serial offenders, with high inflation and regular devaluations. Does this matter for you, as an investor in stock markets? The evidence is surprising.