?If you measure the stock market not in dollars, but in gold, it is down 80% since 1999. I no longer regard the US dollar as a valid unit of account. People shouldn't value their wealth in dollars because one day, everyone will be billionaires,? said ultra-bear, Marc Faber, of the Gloom, Boom, and Doom
Much of the fury in yesterday?s nearly 500 point ?melt up? in the Dow was generated by hedge funds panicking to cover shorts. Convinced of the imminent collapse of Europe, the impotence of governments, and the death spiral in sovereign bonds, many managers were running a maximum short position at the Monday opening, and for
?Don?t get greedy. Don?t expect much. This is a single and double type of market. You?ve got to play it this way,? said Jeffrey Kleintop, a market strategist at LPL Financial.
The world?s major central banks launched a coordinated attempt to restore liquidity to the financial markets today, sending risk assets everywhere flying. The group moved to substantially lower interbank dollar swap rates, from 100 to 50 basis points. These swaps involve Federal Reserve dollar deposits with the European Central Bank and offsetting ECB Euro deposits
For the first time in three years, China (FXI) has cut its prime lending rate by 50 basis points. The timing caught many analysts by surprise, as such move was not expected until the lunar new year in early February. Perhaps recent data showing collapsing exports prompted the Mandarins in Beijing to hurriedly move up
Mark Fisher of MBF Asset Management and Dennis Gartman of the eponymous Gartman Letter joined forces today to launch a new exchange traded note, or ETN, that promises to capture the ?RISK ON? trade. The instrument is designed as an improvement over the old Volatility Index ETF where traders attempted to capture short term market
My worst fears about the deteriorating state of the US residential housing market were confirmed today with the release of the closely watched Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Nationwide, Q3 delivered a 3.9% decline in home prices, hot on the heels of a whopping 5.8% plunge in Q2. Most markets are at 8-10 year lows with
This year, your bonus is that you get to keep your job. That is the bad news that will be dished out to many disappointed staff during annual reviews at the major Wall Street firms this year. We all know that volumes have been trading at subterranean levels which have created a real drought of
?We?re spending billions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let?s rebuild America first. If you build us a bridge or a school in West Virginia we won?t blow it up and we won?t burn it down,? said Senator Joe Manchin.
The coming bear trap that I warned about last week sprung this morning on the non-subscribing unwary, triggering panic buying by short sellers in all ?RISK ON? assets. Oil (USO), gold (GLD), silver (SLV), copper (CU), and foreign currencies all moved in lockstep to the upside. The trigger was news that leaked out over the