Brent extended losses from a four-year low as Saudi Arabia offered customers in Asia record discounts on its crude, bolstering speculation it’s defending market share. West Texas Intermediate dropped in New York. Futures fell as much as 0.7 percent in London and are headed for a second weekly decline. State-run Saudi Arabian Oil Co. cut…
The US dollar is little changed against most of the major currencies but is taking another step up against the yen. The failure of the Democrat Party of Japan to mount a serious challenge to Abe, despite the quite divided public support for Abenomics, is leading to surveys that the LDP and Komeito coalition will retain…
Why the bounce in the Euro? There is resistance appearing within the Governing Council that is far larger than previously believed. There is no majority within the 6 member Executive Board raising some hope that massive flooding of euros may subside. Lautenschläger, Mersch and Coeure are opposing Draghi’s plans to blow-out the money supply. Other council…
Getting back up to speed after a head cold. Not a whole lot to report, despite the roller coaster ride in European markets yesterday. The S&P is primed to push to new highs, yesterday’s doji left it pressuring resistance. The Nasdaq may be shaping a ‘bear flag’, which may give shorts something to work with…
Inflation has been quiescent the last few years, and the world’s monetary authorities are convinced that, in spite of their extreme money printing, it’ll stay that way. But we should regard all such predictions with the deepest suspicion and structure our portfolios accordingly. Specifically, we need to see how sensitive our portfolio is to an upsurge…
Thoughts and ideas from a Startup Asia Jakarta 2014’s disscussion. Photocredit: Tech in Asia One of our discussions at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014 explored how Indonesia can learn from developed startup ecosystems overseas. During the panel, Tech in Asia had the opportunity to compare three very different ecommerce markets to the world’s largest archipelago: Japan, Silicon Valley,…
Louisiana Pacific (LPX – Snapshot Report) announced earnings in early November, and once again they missed the Zacks Consensus Earnings Estimate. This is the fourth out of the last five quarters that Louisiana Pacific has missed the earnings consensus, with the one standalone only meeting expectations in Q1 2014. The Revenue side has not been much better with…
The XAU/USD pair closed the day slightly lower that opening but remained within the trading range of the previous two days. The precious metal traded as high as $1213.26 an ounce but pulled back to the $1207.70 – 1200 area after the ECB president Mario Draghi said that policy makers discussed buying all assets except…
In the aftermath of the abysmal start to the 2014 holiday selling season, one thing has (or should have) become abundantly clear: America’s middle class, which refuses to lever up to idiotic proportions as the memory of 2007 and the subsequent crash will remain all too vivid for a generation, is dying a painful death,…
Are we about to see U.S. stocks take a significant tumble? If you are looking for a “canary in the coal mine” for the U.S. stock market, just look at high yield bonds. In recent years, almost every single time junk bonds have declined substantially there has been a notable stock market correction as well. …
