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The $600 Million Signal That The Oil Crunch Is Over
Pundits just missed a $600 million signal that oil’s downward slide is over. You see, oil “sages” everywhere are now calling for $40-$50 a barrel oil by mid-year. As proof, they call on vague rumors of a Saudi-Russia deal to cut oil production, costly shale oil producers collapsing, or the energy debt crisis. But they’re overlooking one crucial thing – the main signal that oil prices are turning around. You see, the largest move of its kind ever just took place in oil markets… $600 million worth in one day. Pundits may have missed it, but that doesn’t mean you have to. It’s a clear sign that oil prices are turning around... -
Finance 0
The 2016 Market Crisis
There’s no question 2016 got off to a rough start, but it was almost on par with the past two years. This year, the S&P 500 finished January down 5%. By comparison, the index fell 3.5% in January 2014 and dropped 3.1% in 2015. So the rough start seems to be the norm for recent years. According to the popular January barometer, the month of January should forecast stock performance for the year. But in 2014 and 2015, it failed to do so. This has caused many analysts to claim the January barometer is broken. I say it’s not. In fact, it’s actually signaling a 20% drop in the market this year… The January barometer is the idea that if... -
Finance 0
The January Jobs Report Does Not Ensure A March Rate Hike
Investors should be alarmed by what the Fed will miss in the most recent slew of data on the state of the U.S. labor market. By the same token, they should be reassured that there’s is another payroll report ahead of the March Federal Open Market Committee meeting. What messages will the Fed glean? Their in-house economists’ metrics will tell them that consumer spending will pick up in the months to come care of full-time job creation and accelerating wage gains. Indeed, wage growth last year was the briskest since July 2009 and January’s outsized 0.5-percent gain gives credence to those who’ve been warning about growing paychecks. Ex... -
Finance 0
Bull Of The Day: Ethan Allen
Ethan Allen (ETH – Snapshot Report) is a leading interior design company and a manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer of upscale home furnishings. They are one of the best known brands in the industry. They have approximately 1,500 interior designers in their North American design centers. Their products are sold exclusively through 300 design centers around the world and their ecommerce website. Solid Quarterly Results The company reported its second quarter fiscal 2016 results on Jan 26. Adjusted earnings for the quarter came in at $0.55 per share, up almost 50% from the same quarter last year and much ahead of the Zacks Con... -
Finance 0
E The Presidential Race And A Return To The Gold Standard
U.S. Republican politicians, more than any other political animal, like to talk about “balanced budgets”. Because of this, many of these same politicians also make references to returning to a gold standard. Why? For the answer to that question; we turn to a legendary hater of gold (and the gold standard), John Maynard Keynes. This infamous, economic charlatan famously whined that a gold standard functioned as a set of “Golden Handcuffs.” This begs further questions. Who was being handcuffed? How were they being handcuffed? It’s actually very simple. A “gold standard” is a monetary system based upon Honest Money. This is a conce... -
Finance 0
A Game Changer For Gold In 2016? Watch These 2 Signs Closely
2016 will be an important year for gold. Will the price of gold fall for the 4th year in a row or will there be an end to this brutal bear market. The good news is, you only need to watch 2 signs to know the answer. After all the market turmoil you would have thought gold would have performed better. With a modest gain gold performs better than stocks, but many gold bugs surely hoped to see a significant increase under these conditions. While stock investors are running to the exit, gold bugs are still scare to find. There are the 4 most important reasons gold didn’t skyrocket (yet): The US Dollar kept up pretty good Number of shor... -
Finance 0
Shelly Palmer Talks Alphabet With Richard Quest On CNN
(Video length 00:03:55) Shelly Palmer talks to Richard Quest about Alphabet taking Apple’s place as the most valuable company in the world on CNN’s Quest Means Business. ... -
Finance 0
On Running A Concentrated Portfolio
Photo credit: Michael Dales I tend to run a fairly concentrated portfolio at Sizemore Capital. My Dividend Growth portfolio – which is an income-focused long-only strategy – will generally have between 20 and 30 stocks at any given time. There is no particular “science” that goes into this number. It isn’t a magic number, and I haven’t run studies to optimize it. But in my experience, 20-30 stocks is the sweet spot for me. It’s concentrated enough to allow for my favorite stocks to really have an impact on portfolio returns. But it’s diversified, so if a single stock has an unexpected blow-up on me, it won’t sink the port... -
Finance 0
Full Employment
The headline Establishment Survey number disappointed at just 151k in January. The figure does not represent the actual amount of jobs gained, of course, since employment in January is typically about 3 million less than December. What that estimate represents is a combination of imputations about seasonality (comparing the actual change in the data set to the “typical” decline December to January) and at the start a stochastic modeling based on a non-exhaustive sample. That sample size is admittedly large, about 163,000 businesses and government agencies representing 623,000 individual worksites, but that does not mediate the necessity t... -
Finance 0
Even With The Market Rolling Over, This Is What Bears Are Worried About
With faith in “growth” faltering and the momo leaders rolling over… JPMorgan warns there are still worries for the bears in the intermediate term… For the SPX overall the ceiling remains clear: since its hard to foresee sustained upside to either ’16 EPS ests (~$120 is best case for the SPX) or the multiple (16x) then any move towards the mid-1900s should still be faded. Sentiment is very gloomy fundamentally but investors in the last few days have been reluctant to sell/press shorts aggressively ahead of Yellen’s testimony (2/10 and 2/11) while over the intermediate term bears worry about: 1) a burst of brie...
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