Exactly three months ago, the Swiss National Bank issued a report which everyone was eagerly anticipating: its interim results for the quarter ended March 31 in which it laid out just how much it had loss after it took on an “artificially strong” Swiss Franc market back in September 2011… and admitted defeat when on January…
Joe Deane, bond fund PIMCO‘s head of municipal bond portfolio management, Dave Hammer, municipal portfolio manager, and Sean McCarthy, the head of municipal credit research, sat down last week to discuss the evolving Puerto Rican Debt Crisis. The first thing the PIMCO execs did in the piece was to toot their own horn a bit. They noted the…
During May of this year a meme spread through the financial world about the under performance of the Dow Jones Transportation Index (DJTA) in relation to the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA). Everyone was talking about the Dow Theory non-confirmation and what it meant for the markets. Today DJTA is still under performing, but the crowd isn’t…
The unexpectedly record low increase in Q2 US Employment Cost Index unwound the some of the dollar’s weekly gains and neutralized the near-term technical outlook. Next week’s nonfarm payrolls are still critical, and the weakness may put even greater burden on the jobs data to demonstrate that slack is indeed being absorbed. The Dollar Index…
The month of July was chockablock with economic events with some crashing the global market and some showering smart gains on it. A resolution of the one-and-half month long Greek debt deal drama, upheaval in Chinese shares, the long-standing guesswork on the Fed’s liftoff timeline and the takeoff of the all-important earnings season dominated headlines…
Gold elected a Monthly Bearish Reversal today at 1155. We have some support down at the 1042 level for now. Technical support for August lies at the 1029 level. We will be issuing the update on gold for those who purchased last year’s report by the end of the month to cover the downside. This…
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE This chart looks at the Thompson/Reuters Commodity Index on a monthly basis for the past 50 years. The index took off in the early 1970’s and rallied over 200% in a little over a decade at (1). Then it created a potential double top. What followed at (2)? An…
Within a sub-sector of all REITs lies a seemingly attractive group of equities that offer high dividend yields around 10%, but the real story about the safety of those dividends is much different. They are highly leveraged and any change in interest rates can be catastrophic to your investment. Tim Plaehn recommends you avoid this…
One can’t miss the flurry in securities exchanges as companies scurry for an initial public offering. Heightening the frenzy is better trading volumes for all goods and commodities as well as launch options of futures contracts. The long lineup of trade on the bourses includes equities, commodities, derivatives, debt and ETFs or exchange traded funds…
The quarterly increase in US wages was just 0.2% – a third of the 0.6% rise expected – and a meager 2% increase Y/Y in line with all the other depressed BLS data, which dashes the “wage growth is looming” meme and crushed the 0.7% rise in Q1 that had so many hopeful of escape velocity…
