India is a much more entrepreneurial society than the United States. That may seem surprising since India is poor and we typically associate entrepreneurship with being rich, but it’s clearly true. Everyone here is on the make and open to opportunity. You need to hire someone to fix your wifi or repair a bicycle or make a movie? You can find someone within hours. “Yes, we can do that” is the default answer to any question. Of course, it may have to be done illegally but, subject to that, it can be done. The can-do attitude is especially prevalent in Mumbai but it’s true elsewhere in India as well. Indians are entrepreneurial because t...
Fed meeting on Wednesday. Trump didn’t do anything too crazy over the weekend (but Turkey did), so we haven’t got much to do while we wait for the Fed to officially raise rates 0.25%. Oil’s fall is calling a big stir in the news but it’s hardly news to us as we were shorting it all the way to our goal at $48.75 and now, at $48 (/CL), we’re more interested in finding a bottom while everyone else begins to panic. So far, so wrong on Gasoline (/RB) and we’ve tried to play that long off the $1.60 line and now $1.58 but we’re sticking with them as refineries are rolling over to summer blends and pr...
According to the International Monetary Fund, global debt has grown to a staggering grand total of 152 trillion dollars. Other estimates put that figure closer to 200 trillion dollars, but for the purposes of this article let’s use the more conservative number. If you take 152 trillion dollars and divide it by the seven billion people living on the planet, you get $21,714, which would be the share of that debt for every man, woman and child in the world if it was divided up equally. So if you have a family of four, your family’s share of the global debt load would be $86,856. Very few families could write a check for that amount today, ...
EUR/USD made a move to the upside, topping the 1.07 temporarily. ECB related events are behind the move. What’s next? The team at NAB has some doubts. Here is their view, courtesy of eFXnews: The EUR has been holding its own in the face of Fed-speak-inspired USD gains, thanks to a re-pricing of ECB policy following last week’s meeting, notes NAB Markets Research. “We’d now need to see a combination of further ECB re-pricing alongside a further significant improvement in second-round polling predictions for French Independent candidate Macron in order pull EUR/USD as high as 1.08,” NAB argues. However, NAB doesn’t expect a de...
In France, President Hollande’s utter failure to foster broad consensus for structural reforms has paved the way for the most contested election in decades. While public debate focuses on the 2nd round winner, the real story is that Marine Le Pen’s agenda has already shifted the French political landscape. In recent polls, the French presidential rivalry involves 3-4 viable candidates, which together account for 85-90 percent of the total vote. Until recently, the leader of the Front National, Marine Le Pen, and the centrist Emmanuel Macron have each garnered about 25 percent in the polls. The two are followed by the center-right Fra...
Eight years ago last week, President Barack Obama gave investors a surprisingly hot trading tip. In office less than two months, he commented that we were at “the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you’ve got a long-term perspective.” Obama couldn’t have known then how accurate his call was. The market found a bottom that very week, and investors who took the president’s advice managed to get in on the absolute ground floor. At the time, investor sentiment was at or near record lows. The number of S&P 500 Index stocks trading below $10 a share had grown tenfold since the end of 2007. The New York Stock Excha...
Written by Michael Noonan (Michael Noonan) This article is a brief, but totally accurate, description of what money is. People prefer to believe in the lie, that… Federal Reserve Notes (debt instruments) are real money and accept as such.Fiction takes precedence over reality. There is only one form of money…and that form is in gold and silver. The Coinage Act of 1792 established silver as the monetary money of account in the United States, and while the government and federal courts still refuse to acknowledge it, that law has never been overturned and still applies – at least it is supposed to apply. A U.S. dollar is ...
Last weeks move in Crude Oil, down over 8.8% was triggered by new “Record High” US inventory data and news that OPEC production cuts are near 85% compliance have prompted a breakdown. We have been expecting a breakout move for a few weeks and suspected production would outpace demand, as it has been for many months. Below is the chart of oil we sent to followers last week. Price of oil after the breakdown which we traded SCO inverse fund With the weekly EIA inventory report stated a huge 8.2 million barrel inventory increase while production levels are, overall, decreasing.This prompted a continued bearish price slide for Oil and Gas rel...
Preferred stocks offer the distinction of being unique hybrid instruments with qualities of both stocks and bonds.In that manner, they offer healthy dividend yields alongside a favored position in the capital structure of many companies that issue these securities. The reason company’s issue preferred shares are to raise capital from investors that are seeking an attractive yield without adding traditional debt (bonds) that carry strict maturity dates and covenants.Preferred stocks can also be “callable” from the issuer, who has the right to redeem them at a certain price or time at their discretion. Sometimes the prices of preferre...
The Financial Times reported that “a civil war has broken out within the White House over trade”[1]. The war has the economic nationalists squaring off against the pro-trade factions from Wall Street. Readers are well-versed in the pro-trade approach since this philosophy has dominated policy making worldwide starting in the 1960s with the Kennedy round of tariff reductions. But today we are hearing more from the Trump officials about the need to eliminate trade deficits, to introduce border taxes and punish currency manipulators. The U.S. trade deficits as a per cent of GDP has hovered around the 3 per cent mark for several decades (se...