Investing and Trading News, with a Contrarian, Sarcastic Twist!
Quietly, Chinese stocks continue to slide, now down 12% for the year to date. Since China had announced its plans to target inflation, the Shanghai Index has taken it on the chin: Chinese stocks quickly retraced a portion of their 2008 losses – and then slowly faded. (Source: StockCharts.com) Regular readers know that we like […]
Here’s an interesting take on the lasting effects of WikiLeaks from geopolitical expert George Friedman, Founder of Stratfor. I go on and off with my subscription to Stratfor – they give excellent insights into geopolitics, taking a game theory approach to determine what actions the various actors will take. While I’m not currently a subscriber, […]
Municipal bonds continue to get taken to the cleaners – here’s an ugly chart for ya: Muni bonds fall off a cliff. (Source: StockCharts.com) Ever since the Muni Bond Put known at the Build America Bonds fund was given an expiration date, investors have shown little appetite for tax-free municipal debt. Mish Shedlock explored the […]
Continuing on our theme from yesterday that investor sentiment has reached an extreme level of jubilation, John Hussman writes that we’ve now reached the pantheon of “awful times to invest”: In recent weeks, the U.S. stock market has been characterized by an overvalued, overbought, overbullish, rising-yields syndrome that has historically been hostile to stocks. Last […]
Overall credit, as measured by the quarterly Z1 report, turned up significantly in the 3rd quarter for the first time in a few quarters – does this mean the deflation threat passed? Fellow deflationist Vox Day is not impressed – he writes: So, while Z1 reports a quarterly increase of 0.43% in overall credit, the first […]
Over the longer haul, many of us believe that oil is heading higher. If you subscribe to the peak oil theory, or at least some derivation of it, this trend is basically regarded as fact. But for the shorter term, oil may be due for some degree of pullback. Speculative longs on the black goo […]
The “dumb money” is starting to work itself into a frenzy – Steve Sjuggerud writes in today’s DailyWealth: Today, “the Dumb Money is 71% confident in a rally,” my friend Jason Goepfert wrote. Jason tracks investor sentiment through his website SentimenTrader. The last time the Dumb Money was this optimistic was back in April, right before the […]
As most intelligent investors and business people can see, most of the recent stimulus and “quantitatively eased” funds are not really finding their way into the heart of the American economy. Ironically, much of this money is heading overseas, with China being as hot a destination as any. So, while boneheaded American politicians hem and […]
David Rosenberg writes today in his always excellent Lunch With Dave: It’s interesting that so many pundits lay claim to how great the shopping season is going – and yet nobody is using credit! Have a look at On Christmas Shopping Lists, No Credit Slips on the front page of today’s NYT. A mere 17% of shoppers have […]
Check out the chart of uranium stalwart Cameco – can you spot the trend? Source: StockCharts.com And backing it up a bit, we can see that Cameco has decisively pushed to two year highs – and it’s making a run at its pre-“end-of-the-world” levels: Source: StockCharts.com Most trend traders watching CCJ would have likely “gone long” […]
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