Latest Posts

  • Finance 0

    Stocks And Precious Metals Charts – Rally Monkeys Away

    US equities rallied today on the earnings report from WalMart, and an excess of hot money with nowhere productive to go. Today was characterized as a great time to buy the dip, which occurred earlier this week. Tomorrow will be a stock options expiration. The House passed its version of ‘tax reform’ today. It will have to be reconciled with reform from the Senate. The yield curve differential between the 2y and 10y treasuries continues to flatten, with some suggesting it will go to ‘0’ next year. This is a signal of an oncoming recession. The yield shows that the US consumer is ‘tapped out.’ The Fed says th...
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    Market Talk – Thursday, November 16

    Interesting that the Yen saw only minimal inbound traffic on Wednesday’s equity sell-off and today is still little changed with a stock rally! Admittedly, volumes are a shadow of what they used to be some years back, but just demonstrates how the game has changed. There is still plenty of money sitting on the side lines and happy to step back in without the need to protect themselves. The Nikkei eventually closed over 300 points higher a gain of 1.5% on the day. Late in the trading day we heard the positive tax reform news from the states and saw Yen trade back above 113 and looks like the game is back-on. Asian futures also following the U...
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    4 Quality ETFs & Stocks For Market-Beating Returns

    After surging to peak levels on Nov 7, the Wall Street is again entangled in a web of woes ranging from uncertainty in tax reform to a slide in oil prices. This is especially true given that the tax plan unveiled by the Senate differs from that of House Republicans on various fronts that have raised concerns over the delay in the implementation of corporate tax cuts, which happened to be the major driver of the recent stock market rally. Meanwhile, oil price retreated from its two-year high reached on Nov 6 on a weak demand outlook and an increase in crude inventories. Further, the flattening of the yield curve has made investors jittery, as ...
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    Tesla’s Origin Story In One Giant Infographic

    Priced at $17 per share just seven years ago, the Tesla IPO ended up being a total bargain for anyone lucky enough to get in. However, this view comes with the benefit of plenty of hindsight – and even Elon Musk would tell you that it wasn’t always obvious that the company would be around in 2017. There were periods of time when layoffs were rampant, the company’s payroll was covered by credit cards, and Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy. RISE OF TESLA: THE HISTORY (PART 1 OF 3) Today’s massive infographic comes to us from Global Energy Metals, and it is the first part of our three-part Rise of Tesla Series, which will soon be a ...
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    Fund Managers Overweight Emerging Markets & Underweight U.S. Stocks

    Fund Manager’s Survey We’ve looked at some of the results from the BAML fund manager’s survey in a previous article. Let’s look at some more results to help us forecast where asset prices are going. The chart below shows the z scores of a few assets. When the z score is high, it is overbought and when the z score is low, it’s oversold. As you can see, the banks have a z score near 2 which shows us that they will likely sell off in the coming weeks. I’m guessing this survey was done a couple weeks ago because there was a selloff in the first week of November in the KRE regional bank index as it fell 6.05% from its late October high...
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    Tesla Investors May Be Losing Patience

    Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a history of over-promising and under-delivering. Following the most recent quarterly earnings, investor patience may finally be wearing thin.  I have covered advanced biofuel companies for more than a decade, and just about all of them made implausible claims about their technologies. They consistently overpromised and underdelivered, until they finally ran out of money and declared bankruptcy. I am not sure that electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla will share the same fate, but management is demonstrating the same pattern. Tesla CEO Elon Musk frequently says grandiose things to investors that ultimately fall far sh...
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    Industrial Production Jumps: Another Hurricane Effect?

    Industrial production rose 0.9% in October after a revised 0.4% in September. In reference to the discrepancy between industrial production and the regional Fed manufacturing reports, Econoday says “The last piece has fallen into place.” What’s the real story? When I went to bed early this morning the futures were jumping. I figured the report was good, but how good? This is what Econoday had to say. The last piece has fallen into place. The manufacturing component of the industrial production has not been confirming the enormous strength of regional and private surveys nor recent acceleration in factory orders data, that ...
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    US Equity Markets – Short Term Vs Long Term Charts Telling A Different Story

    (Audio length 00:11:11) Doc is with me to discuss the moves in the US equity markets. The Dow is up almost 200 points on the back of some better than expected earnings and news that the House is going to vote on tax reform. Again more momentum chasing and optimism around tax reform is driving the markets....
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    October 2017 Headline Industrial Production Significantly Improved

    The headlines say seasonally adjusted Industrial Production (IP) was up. The manufacturing segment of industrial production also improved. Analyst Opinion of Industrial Production There was significant upward revision to the existing data over the last 6 months – so even though the data was better than last month, it is even better when compared to the upward backward revisions. The best way to view this is the 3 month rolling averages which improved. Industrial production is in a long term upward trend. Manufacturing employment growth remains flat year-over-year…   Headline seasonally adjusted Industrial Production (IP) was up 0...
    On November 16, 2017 / By
  • Finance 0

    The Flames Went Higher

    A few weeks ago I wrote “stock market breadth is much worse than this popular measure indicated” referring to the advance/decline line and how its strength masked technical erosion going on under the surface of the indexes. Since then breadth hasn’t improved. In fact, it’s gotten worse. The “Hindenburg Omen” was developed by Jim Miekka as a warning of a stock market crash. While it’s not very effective in this regard it can be very useful in assessing the overall strength of an uptrend. Recently, there have been a number of these omens triggered on both the NYSE and the Nasdaq. This is really due to the fact that while the index...
    On November 16, 2017 / By