I spent a few minutes with my friends at Fox 26 Houston yesterday discussing the FOMC’s recent two day meeting and why the Fed will not raise interest rates this year. As I wrote yesterday, the track record of the Fed’s economic forecasting has been abysmal as shown in the attendant chart of their projections…
Over the past week our core market health indicators bounced around a bit, but mostly improved. Our core measures of risk improved after a few weeks of falling closer to the zero line. One thing that is concerning in this category is a few of the indicators have been painting lower highs since July 2014….
After six years and two months of 0% interest rates with three rounds of quantitative easing (QE) in between, the Federal Reserve chose to finally remove the word “patient” from their official statement. Hawkish at last! Not so fast. I once heard that you should never underestimate the dovishness of Janet Yellen and she delivered on…
Earlier today, when previewing today’s quad witching day, we casually predicted that a “vol surge” lay ahead. What we really meant was a vol of vol surge, because just over an hour into today’s trading, an HFT algo briefly lost it as it sent the critical VXX ETF (whose continued decline today has assured that the June…
Gold has hit my short term objective of the overhead resistance at 1185, albeit in three of steps. Sprott silver has taken its cash levels up to a much more healthy level with the sale of a bit more silver from its trust. I think a lot of bearish sentiment was leaning into the FOMC…
You have to hand it to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He had us all guessing. The usually highly visible Russian leader disappeared from public view for a week and half, leading to speculation that he was dead or secretly deposed in a coup. Russia being Russia, it wouldn’t be too shocking if Putin actually had been deposed…
I’ve heard just about every argument to be had on why the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a relic of a bygone era. Some point out that the index is too narrow, with just 30 mega-cap stocks. Others point to the antiquated price weighted construction methodology that confounds nouveau index enthusiasts. Still others can’t comprehend the plodding…
Tiffany & Company (TIF), the designer and retailer of fine jewelry, came out with fourth-quarter fiscal 2014 results, wherein earnings of $1.51 per share that fared a penny better than the Zacks Consensus Estimate while rising 3% year over year. Given global uncertainties and stronger dollar, Tiffany expects fiscal 2015 earnings to grow modestly over $4.20 earned…
Have you noticed that some gold investors don’t seem very concerned about the current behavior of gold? While the price remains weak and range-bound, some gold investors don’t seem worried about it at all. The natural reaction to an asset you own losing a third of its value, with seemingly little motivation to move higher,…
We will leave it to the chartists to provide an appropriate name for the formation shown below (mutation unchallenged head and shoulders?) but one that is obvious is that global stocks as measured by the MSCI world index have never been higher, and the global central bank bubbe has now easily surpassed both the dot…
