“What dost thou see, lone watcher on the tower Is the day breaking? comes the wish’d-for hour? Tell us the signs, and stretch abroad thy hand If the bright morning dawns upon the land. The stars are clear above me, scarcely one Has dimm’d its rays in reverence to the sun; But yet I see, on the horizon’s verge, Some fair, faint streaks, as if the light would surge.” Charles Mackay, The Watcher On The Tower What failing economy? Gold and silver drifted higher today in what can best be described as ‘lackluster trading.’ The Comex was too bored with its own paper bullion game to even provide data on deli...
Just as governments are cutting back on issuing new debt, the corporate sector has taken up the role of being the largest source of new debt in the United States. This shift in debt issuance is readily apparent in Chart 1. Since the crisis of 2008, the growth in government debt has dramatically decreased from nearly 20 per cent annually to less than 5 per cent, more in line with the nominal growth in the economy. Consumers continue to remain wary of increasing their debt load . On the other hand, the corporate bond market has been on a bit of a tear in recent years .That segment of the debt market now outpaces all other debt issuers. The U.S....
The BEA reported today that Personal Income rose and Consumer spending rose in July. The headline numbers were +0.4% and +0.3% respectively. These are seasonally adjusted month to month % gains. The numbers were also revised up for May and June. Let’s party! The Wall Street Journal headlined: U.S. Consumer Spending Rose in July Domestic consumption could continue to drive economic growth over the second half WSJ reporters Anna Louie Sussman and Ben Leubsdorf clownishly regurgitated the Establishment line. Consumer spending rose for the fourth straight month in July, a sign that domestic consumption could continue to drive U.S. economic grow...
PURCHASE, N.Y., Aug. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — MVC Capital, Inc. (NYSE:MVC) (the “Company”), a publicly traded business development company that makes private debt and equity investments, announced its financial results for the fiscal second quarter ended April 30, 2016. Q2 2016 Highlights Posted quarterly total operating income of $15.9 million for the second quarter of 2016, compared to $5.3M for the second quarter in 2015 and exceeding total operating income for all of fiscal 2015 Earned net operating income of $10.3 million as compared to $2.6 million for the same quarter last year Increased net assets by $6 million or $0.26...
Welcome to my “Ranking, Rating and Score” article for the coming week, the article “Strength and Comparison” has also been published. When looking at the Top 10 in the Weekly Ranking and Rating list we can see that for the coming week the following stronger currencies are well represented for going long: NZD(4X) followed by the JPY(2X) with the USD(2X). The weaker currencies are the CHF(4X) followed by the AUD(3X) A nice combination for coming week may be e.g: NZD/CHF with the AUD/USD AUD/NZD with the CHF/JPY These are just a few examples and many other combinations are possible. The mentioned pair combinations can...
Have you heard of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai? It’s the tallest skyscraper in the world at 828m (2,717 ft), and it was completed in 2009. The price tag was a whopping $1.5 billion, making it one of the most expensive buildings of all time. For these bold projects to get the go ahead, global financial conditions have to be just right. Record-breaking skyscrapers can take multiple years to build, and things can change drastically from start to finish. In this case, construction of the Burj Khalifa started in 2004. By the time it was completed, however, the financial markets were in ruins. Lehman had collapsed, and rescue efforts such as TARP ...
Today was a solid start to the week with stocks closing higher after Friday’s session. Janet Yellen’s speech spurred buyers it wasn’t until Fisher’s comments the market took a nose dive. As the market hit the lows buyers began to mount a defense pushing the market back nearly erasing all the losses. We will not argue with a start like this to the last full week of summer trading. Volatility continues to remain low and we have stocks like CYBE pushing higher. All eyes will be on Friday’s job report where many will be eyeing whether or not the FOMC may hike rates at their September meeting. It is anyone’s best guess at this point, b...
For a market that hasn’t experienced much in the way of volatility lately, Friday, 26 August 2016 was a welcome departure for observers. Unfortunately, if you only tracked the closing price of the S&P 500 from day to day, you wouldn’t have noticed! To see what we mean, let’s flip our usual presentation of charts around and show what our modified model of the alternative future for S&P 500 stock prices projected through Week 4 of August 2016: From the beginning of the week to the end of the week, it would appear that investors kept their forward-looking focus on 2017-Q2 in setting the level of the S&P 500 througho...
The Personal Spending number this morning was ‘better than expected,’ and so stocks did as they were expected to do and rallied, a lot less than the stock touts on financial television would have you believe I must say. The big tickle this week is speculation about what the FOMC will do in September. Since the economy still suffers from a sucking chest wound of policy errors and malinvestment, we might, as well talk about when the Dr. Feelgoods of the Fed will come around with another shot of monetary morphine. Too bad they are giving it to the wealthy patrons and their servants in the peanut gallery, instead of to the patient...