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  • Finance 0

    The End Is Near, Part 8: Apple’s Revenue “Falls Off A Cliff”

    << Read: The End Is Near, Part 1: The “War On Cash” << Read: The End Is Near, Part 2: Everyone Piles Into Junk Bonds << Read: The End Is Near, Part 3: Corporations Are The Ultimate Dumb Money << Read: The End Is Near, Part 4: Peak Trophy Asset Inflation << Read: The End Is Near, Part 5: Paying Dividends With Borrowed Money << Read: The End Is Near, Part 6: Individual Investors Rediscover Individual Stocks <<Read: The End Is Near, Part 7: Governments Become (Really Bad) Money Managers One by one the pillars of the recovery are toppling. Last year the Chinese infrastructure party ended and th...
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Biotech Stocks Snooze Through Today’s Rally Awaiting Earnings This Week: ABBV, AMGN, BIIB, BMY,CELG

    Biotech Stocks Caught Snoozing in Today’s Rally Dow Jones up 1.78%, NASDAQ up 1.09%, S&P up 1.41% Large Cap Earnings Reports Begin This Week Healthcare and biotech stocks were lagging the big rally today with the IBB near the flat line down and the XLV barely up 0.5%. Energy and material stocks were up sharply lifting the Dow and the S&P up over 1.5% in an abrupt reversal from yesterday’s gloomy session. the market has been fixated on crude and today March crude futures rallied to $32 boosting the XLE 3.78% at the $55 ‘handle” its support level for January. Large cap energy movers were drillers like Schlumberger Ltd. (SL...
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Another Corporate Giant Is Leaving The U.S. – What This Means For You

    Try getting in shape for a marathon on an all-McDonald’s diet… You wouldn’t be surprised to come in dead last. After all, you didn’t put in much effort. Actually, you went out of your way to make yourself less competitive. So you would expect to lose. It’s just common sense. But this is exactly what U.S. politicians have been doing for years: passing tax laws that sabotage the country’s global economic competitiveness. As you can see in the chart below, the U.S. has the highest effective corporate income tax rate in the developed world. This is a major reason why the U.S. is lagging behind in the global economic marathon....
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Daily Market Analysis – January 27, 2016

    During the day on Wednesday, we have several announcements coming out of the news cycle, as the FOMC releases its statement, the New Zealand central bank also releases an interest rate statement, and then of course we get the oil inventories number as well. Ultimately, we think that there will be quite a bit of volatility. 1 – We still believe in the US dollar overall, and as we’ve seen a bit of a pullback in the value the US dollar, we think that value hunters will continue to look to buy calls and puts in favor the US dollar, as it has given back a bit of its gains over the last 24 hours. Ultimately, we believe that the value the US d...
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    60 Reasons Why Oil Investors Should Hang On

    Inventories will continue to rise, but the momentum is slowing. The following are some observations as to how we got here and how we’re gonna get out.  9 reasons why oil has taken so long to bottom:  1. OPEC increased production in 2015 to multiyear highs, principally in Saudi Arabia and Iraq where production between the two added 1.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) to inventories after the no cut stance was adopted.  2. Russian production increased in 2015 to post Soviet highs.  3. Long planned Gulf of Mexico production began coming on in late 2015.  4. An overhang of 3,000 or 4,000 shale wells that were drilled but uncomplet...
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler

    Podcast: Play in new window | Play in new window (Duration: 13:16 — 6.1MB) DOW + 282 = 16,167 SPX + 26 = 1903 NAS + 49 = 4567 10 Y – .03 = 1.99% OIL + .11 = 30.45 GOLD + 11.80 = 1120.70 The Federal Reserve had always planned to pause after raising interest rates in December, but the question now is how long that break will last. Initial expectations were that the FOMC would raise rates again this March, but a downturn in the equity markets, a stronger dollar and weak inflation have led some to predict that another move may be months away. Investors may get some more insight as Fed officials gather today for a two-day session, their f...
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    How Healthy Is The Labor Market, Really?

    What’s the “official” unemployment rate vs. economic reality? In my analysis of the monthly jobs reports on the first Friday of the month, I make a statement similar to this:  “The official unemployment rate is 5.0%. However, if you start counting all the people who want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is 9.9%. Some of those dropping out of the labor force retired because they wanted to retire. Th...
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    The Illusion Of Safety: Index Funds Are Not Low-Risk

    The financial service industry’s Prime Directive is to exploit humanity’s core drives of Greed and Fear. Financial service companies promise high returns (fulfilling our greed) that are low-risk, i.e. “safe” (placating our fear of losing our nest-egg). But the safety of many supposedly low-risk investments is illusory. The risk is not actually near-zero; rather, the risk has been buried, masked or obscured, for the obvious purpose of persuading the marks (i.e. the investing public, non-financial institutions, etc.) that the promised gains are essentially risk-free. One example of selling the illusion of safety is the...
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    Large API Build Signals To Market That Production Cuts Are Needed

    We had large 11 million plus build in oil inventories according to API, we will see if tomorrow`s EIA report confirms this large number. The shorts will be geared up for another attack on the market for Wednesday....
    On January 27, 2016 / By
  • Finance 0

    No Strategic Reason To Own Nominal Bonds Now

    Today I presented our 2016 inflation forecast to the investment committee for a multifamily office, and when I was putting the presentation together I developed one slide that really is a must-see for investors in my opinion. For some time, TIPS have been too cheap. Really, it has been more than a year that our metrics have shown inflation-linked bonds as not just cheap, but really cheap compared to nominal bonds. I don’t mean that real yields will fall – so this isn’t a statement about whether I am bullish or bearish on fixed-income. Frankly, I am somewhat conflicted on that point at this moment. Rather, it is a statement about what ...
    On January 27, 2016 / By