In “Post-Fed Rally: Good as Gold”, I concluded that gold futures prices looked “poised to shape a new upleg and test $1281 in coming weeks”. The level, corresponding to both a 61.8% Fibonacci retracement and a 61.8% target, constituted a fairly significant technical resistance and bypassing this threshold is a notable bullish development. Over the past few weeks several political and geopolitical factors goaded safe haven assets higher, providing a particularly positive environment for gold and helping to push it past this fairly important resistance. GEOPOLITICAL FACTORS IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT Geopolitical tensions have escalate...
Written by StockNews.com Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (Nasdaq: ISRG) late Tuesday posted market-beating first quarter results, as its revolutionary surgical robotic-assisted surgery machine continues to prove very popular. The Sunnyvale, CA-based surgical system maker reported: Q1 earnings per share (EPS) of $5.09, which was $0.11 better than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $4.98. Revenues rose 13.4% from last year to $674.2 million, also topping analysts’ view for $664.72 million… Worldwide da Vinci procedures rose almost 18% year-over-year in the latest period. That growth was driven mostly by U.S. general surgery procedures, alo...
Yahoo (YHOO) and IBM (IBM) released their latest quarterly earnings report after closing bell tonight. IBM reported adjusted earnings of $2.38 per share on $18.2 billion in revenue, compared to the analyst estimates of $2.35 per share and $18.4 billion. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported $2.35 per share in non-GAAP earnings and $18.7 billion in revenue. Yahoo reported adjusted earnings of 18 cents per share on $1.3 billion in GAAP revenue. Most analysts are winding down their coverage of the company because of the pending acquisition by Verizon. In last year’s first quarter, Yahoo reported 8 cents per share in non-GAAP earnings. ...
The US Dollar is determined to have a showdown with its 200-day. With all the global tensions I would have thought the dollar would be doing better. I haven’t had time to read the news so I don’t know if this selling is news related. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. People just didn’t want to own dollars today. Another lower low and a break of the 200-day would be an additional boost for the foreign ETFs which have been signaling strength for some time now. Rates This spreadsheet is telling us that fixed income is gaining in relative strength, but it still has a way to go before it starts to outperform stocks. I think we ne...
“In one of his last speeches as Fed Chair, Bernanke bragged about how Fed didn’t have info it needed in 2009 to say banks were solvent. How would Bernanke know? He never took significant interest in the regulatory findings, simply followed assurances of others. OCC was complicit in tolerating excesses of banks in the lead up to the Great Financial Crisis; in aftermath, teeth never shown. Essentially, the Great Financial Crisis was result of widespread fraud on the part of sellers of ‘securitized assets’. Books of banks masked huge SPE exposure. ‘Opaque securities’ were sold as investible quality but nothi...
I can analyze the economy in specific detail for endless articles, but the health of the economy has had declining relation to the stock market returns lately. I calculated the correlation between quarterly GDP and the S&P 500 from 2008 to 2016. The correlation coefficient is 0.973 which signals there’s very high correlation between the two variables. However, you look at the data from 2014 to 2016, which is the time when the economy has been weak while stocks rallied, the coefficient of correlation has dropped to 0.819. It’s not surprising because investors aren’t buying stocks because of the strength of the economy. They’re buyi...
96% technical buy signals 14 new highs and up 14.10% in the last month Technical support at 107.45 The Chart of the Day belongs to Sanderson Farms (SAFM). I found the poultry products stock by using Barchart to sort today’s All Time High list first for the most frequent number of new highs in the last month, then again for technical buy signals of 80% or more. Since the Trend Spotter signaled a buy on 3/22 the stock gained 10.20%. Sanderson Farms Inc. is a fully-integrated poultry processing company engaged in the production, processing, marketing and distribution of fresh and frozen chicken products. The company sells ice pac...
One of the questions we most frequently get from readers is about breakout markets and breakout stocks. That is why we are covering breakout stocks more than average in recent weeks. One of the few sectors that really look constructive at this point: clean energy stocks. It is almost the only potential candidate for a stock market breakout in May of 2017. Intuitively, clean energy stocks should be in a raging bull market. If there is one clear trend in this world, it certainly is the “green trend”. Clean energy stocks certainly did very well in 2013 and the first months of 2014 but lost 50 percent of their value in the 2 years that fo...