Have you put on your flatteners? That’s a question some folks are asking these days as the odds of a March hike and -dare I speculate – an actual rate hike cycle increase. Now it’s exceedingly possible that you might not be old enough to remember what policy normalization looks like… …but on the off chance you do, you might be wondering what happens to this absurd equity rally in the event financial conditions tighten. As I’ve discussed at length here of late, one of the reasons the Fed pretty much has to move now or forever hold its peace is that the juxtaposition between financial conditions today and financial conditions fol...
It seems ever-exuberant energy traders are finally waking up to the reality that the global rebalance is not happening. A record glut of crude and surging production has sent WTI back to a $51 handle this morning (one-month lows) and has weighed on gasoline prices… WTI has broken below its 100-day moving average as the machines ran overnight stops and then plunged after the DOE data… “Inventory drawdown slower than I thought after cuts,” Saudi Arabia’s Khalid Al-Falih admits. Bloomberg’s Vince Piazza warns U.S. inventories across the product value chain remain elevated, with crude oil 39% above the five- year ...
<< Read More: Gold Investing 101 – Beware eBay, Collectibles And “Pure” Gold Coins That Are Gold Plated – Part 1 Investors looking to gold again but gold buyers need to exert caution Royal Mint – a royally expensive way to help the government Unallocated gold – unsecured creditor of a bank? If you cannot hold it, you do not own it Own gold bullion coins as insurance, to reduce counter party risk and to preserve wealth Conclusion – Reduce counter parties, Don’t over complicate Yesterday we pointed out how the gold market is seeing renewed interest from new, first time gold buyers and gold investors. Concern unite...
The best mid cap sector is industrials. The top mid cap industry is semi ICs. The average score for mid cap stocks in our universe is 67.28 and the average score over the past four weeks is 70.21. The typical mid cap stock in our coverage is trading -14.04% below its 52 week high, 5.23% above its 200 dma, has 6.49 days to cover held short and is expected to grow its EPS by 16.8% in the coming year. Industrial goodsand consumer goods score best in mid cap. Technology, financials, and services score in line with the average score. Healthcare, basics, and utilities score below average. The best mid cap industry is semi ICs (MSCC). Residential c...
Snap Inc. (SNAP), the parent company of social network, Snapchat, was off to a brilliant start on its debut. The company’s IPO was multiple times oversubscribed and shares soared 44% on the first day of trading. However, shares fell nearly 10% yesterday amid reports that the company has come under fire from several institutional investors. Snap Lands into Trouble with Institutional Investors Investors aren’t happy with the company’s offering of 200 million Class A shares that carry no voting rights. Per a Business Insider report, they have “approached” stock index providers such as S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI Inc to prevent S...
US trade statistics dramatically improved in January 2017, though questions remain as to interpreting by how much. On the export side, US exports of goods rose 8.7% year-over-year (NSA). While that was the highest growth rate since 2012, there is part symmetry to account for some of it. Exports in the latter half of 2015 and for that first month of 2016 were contracting at double-digit rates, the base effects of the deepest part of the “rising dollar” period. The volume of outbound trade therefore, remains almost 3% less in January 2017 than January 2015, and nearly 8% less than January 2014. Clearly, the export sector has improved, accou...
Written by Ben Carlson …Competition and innovation make it very difficult to know whether or not a company will…[be successful with an IPO as] history shows that the majority of IPOs end up underperforming the overall markets. [As the stats below show,] it seems that private investors enjoy all of the spoils in IPO deals while most public stock market investors are left holding the bag. With SNAP’s early stumble in stock price out of the gate: the offering price was set at $17/share; the stock immediately opened up at around $24/share; it got as high as $29.44 on the first full day of trading but has since fallen back to j...
Shares of retailer Urban Outfitters (URBN) are sinking in early trading after the company’s fourth quarter results missed analysts’ consensus estimates. EARNINGS MISS: After the market close on Tuesday, Urban Outfitters reported Q4 earnings per share of 55c and revenue of $1.03B, narrowly missing the consensus of 56c and $1.04B, respectively. Comparable retail segment net sales, which include comparable direct-to-consumer channel, were flat for the quarter, with comparable retail segment net sales up 2% at Urban Outfitters, up 1.2% at Free People and down 2.9% at Anthropologie. WHAT’S NOTABLE: The earnings miss comes after U...
Forecast A strong dollar will undermine U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to reduce the United States’ trade deficit. If the dollar’s value continues to rise, Trump may consider unilateral or, failing that, multilateral currency interventions to bring it back down. Negotiating a new coordinated monetary intervention in the spirit of the 1985 Plaza Accord will be onerous, however. Analysis The value of the U.S. dollar has risen rapidly over the past three years, up 26 percent since summer 2014. First, a divergence between the expected interest rates of the U.S. Federal Reserve and those of the world’s other central ba...