Another quiet session for Asia with closes small mixed. Toshiba was again a talking point after it lost 12% in today’s trading with the added possibility that it may delisted. China’s President, Xi Jinping, commented recently concerns surrounding President Trump and his views surrounding US trade partners; guess this will be hotly debated come the weekend. Core cash markets upon the FED announcement (+25bp) late this evening saw Yen strengthened with Nikkei trading lower. The China 300 and Hang Seng futures both traded better around 1% and +0.6% respectively. Europe was also quiet, but better ahead of the FED decision and that just ac...
The Chart of the Day belongs to Orbital ATK (OA). I found the aerospace defense stock by using Barchart to sort today’s Top Stock to Own list first for the most frequent number of new highs in the last month, then again for technical buy signal of 80% or better. Since the Trend Spotter signaled a buy om 2/21 the stock gained 11.77%. Orbital ATK, Inc. designs, builds and delivers space, defense and aviation-related systems. The company operates in three segments: Aerospace Group, Defense Group and Sporting Group. Its product include launch vehicles and related propulsion systems; satellites and associated components and service...
We placed a block of ice into the sink the other night and magically, Alfred Hitchcock presented himself. The famed director began every episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents by laying the groundwork for the evening’s story of suspense and terror. In Season 7, on May 1, 1962 the episode called What Frightented you, Fred? aired. It’s the story of a prisoner that once released, prefers to return and remain in prison. The suspense and terror that preceded the Federal Reserve’s already expected decision to raise the rates by ¼% was presented to traders today by Janet Yellen. The Committee expects that gradual adjustments to monetary pol...
USD/JPY dropped like a rock after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Investors completely ignored the rate hike, focusing instead on the dot pot and Fed President Kashkari’s dissent. They were disappointed that today’s decision to raise interest rates was not unanimous as Kashkari preferred to leave rates steady this month and the Fed sees only 2 more rate hikes this year. The dot plot did not shift to 3 rounds of tightening and Janet Yellen was not hawkish enough to rescue the dollar. While she talked positively about the labor market and business sentiment, she also felt that not much had changed since December. She did not offe...
The FMOC talked and no one seemed to listen. At least not us traders, markets got the rate hike they were expecting and yet bonds rallied. But what really caught us by surprise is after the FMOC announcement, interest rates tanked and financial stocks did not respond. Opportunity? We believe so, take a look at these trade setups in today’s markets… Video length: 00:09:42...
The Fed did what was entirely expected today, and did it with a pedestrian view towards the future increases. Slow and steady. And so the markets were ‘surprised’, the dollar dumped hard, stocks rallied, and gold and silver got some legs higher. Today was more a ‘technical event’ than anything else. In other words, it had all the looks of a setup designed to skin the buy side. This is what the financiers do when the real economy is lagging badly, and they have little incentive to make productive, long term commercial and industrial loans. Their preferred methods of making fat profits are centered on collecting more c...
Corporations have more than doubled their debt levels since 2008’s financial crisis, from $3.5 trillion to $8.1 trillion. They are carrying more leverage (e.g., debt-to-revenue, debt-to-EBITDA, etc.) than at any point since the 2000-2002 tech wreck. And the cash relative to the debt on corporate books has been dropping precipitously. Granted, one can choose to emphasize the inexpensive nature of the credit. Why shouldn’t companies borrow by the boatload as long as interest rates remain relative contained? For one thing, corporate borrowing costs may not always remain as friendly as they are today. At least $1 trillion of the debt will c...
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates a quarter-point today. This is the third hike of the past 15 months and places a range of 0.75% to 1.00% on its benchmark short-term Fed Funds rate. However, crude oil has been the primary market mover the past week. Oil has been trading for less than $49 a barrel the past four days, representing a 10% price plunge in March, and pushing the entire Energy sector into a correction. Sectors: This week’s big story among our Sector Benchmark ETFs is located at the bottom of the rankings. Vanguard Energy (VDE) has fallen deep into the red. Its large negative momentum score is a reflection ...
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL ) late Wednesday [Mar 15, 2017 | 3:59pm] posted market-beating fiscal third quarter earnings results, driven by strong cloud growth, and boosted its dividend payout by 27%. Written by StockNews.com The Redwood City, CA-based I.T. giant reported adjusted Q3 earnings per share (EPS) of $0.69, which was $0.07 better than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $0.62. Revenues rose 2.9% from last year to $9.27 billion, also topping analysts’ view for $9.25 billion. Oracle noted that its cloud software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) revenues were surged 73% year-over-year, while Total Cloud Reven...
The Fed hiked today, smack in the face of an Atlanta Fed GDPNow Model forecast of 0.9 percent. The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2017 is 0.9 percent on March 15, down from 1.2 percent on March 8. The GDP growth forecast declined 0.3 percentage points on Friday when the February estimate of the model’s latent dynamic factor used to forecast yet-to-be-released GDP source data declined after the employment situation release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The forecast for first-quarter real consumer spending growth inched down from 1.6 percent to 1.5 per...