Are profits in the market a matter of luck or timing? Charles Schwab (SCHW), an investment company, studied the effects of timing your investments and how this may affect their success. They divided various types of investors into five “characters” with different names, and each one invested $2,000 each year over a twenty-year period: Peter Perfect was the…
While the rest of the world is on the brink of recession, the US might increase interest rates, and the US dollar could continue its upward trend, which started in 2011, for 5–7 years. The US is leading again In the US, recent data confirms the job market trend appears to be strengthening. In November, the…
Midcoast Energy Partners (MEP – Snapshot Report) has seen significant estimate downgrades over the past ninety days. This Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) has had its stock estimates significantly trimmed for the next two quarters and for Fiscal 2014 & 2015. The table below shows the estimate revisions for Midcoast Energy from the past 90 days for the…
Winston Churchill famously said of Russian foreign policy that it was “…a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” What people leave out is what followed. Churchill offered an answer: “… perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” And so it is. Like most crises, the crisis Russia is experiencing is…
The November industrial production data reported yesterday shows no slowdown yet in US oil and gas production, and as goes oil and gas, so goes the US economy. There’s more data and analysis below, but in honor of the occasion I wrote new lyrics for that great old Temptations classic, What Becomes of The North Dakotans….
FedEx Corporation’s (FDX – Analyst Report) second-quarter fiscal 2015 (ended Nov 30, 2014) earnings of $2.14 per share fell well short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.22 per share. The earnings miss was primarily attributable to lower-than-expected revenues in the quarter. Moreover, results were hurt by higher aircraft maintenance expense. The earnings miss resulted in the…
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE Crude Oil has traded inside of rising channel (A) for the past couple of decades and not even the financial crisis in 2009 could cause Crude Oil to break support of this rising channel. The break below the multi-year pennant pattern a couple of months ago has caused a good…
Hope abounds once again this morning. Stocks are up (albeit off their overnight highs) thanks to AUD/JPY and the Ruble is ‘stabilizing’. However, the two crucial factors for recent volatility – crude prices and credit spreads – continue to slump. WTI crude is back below $55 (trading as low as $54.60 this morning) and HY credit spreads have…
The latest tell comes as Gunvor, the #5 gold trader is getting out of the biz basically admitting large scale fraud. Their reason demonstrates why Austria may try and repatriate their gold. It is too late for that. Per Bloomberg, “Gunvor executives decided to abandon the precious metals trading business partly because of difficulties in finding…
