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Big Stocks Are Last Hope for a Decaying Market The Nasdaq is a “dead man walking,” small-caps are weak, more stocks are falling than rising in the S&P 500. When considering stock performance, most analysts and money managers – and certainly retail investors – focus on the twists and turns of the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index. Beat the S&P 500 and collect a nice check for your investing acumen. In today’s market this index is even more important, because it is now the last man standing. I say that even though the Nasdaq is officially in a rising...

Akin Oyedele August 19-2015 Dave Lutz at Jones Trading says a rate hike from the Federal Reserve will be the best thing that happens to the stock market this year. One big concern around rate hikes is that higher borrowing costs put pressure on company earnings, and ultimately, on stocks. However, Lutz noted in a client email on Wednesday that investors would see a rate hike as a clear sign that the economy is on the up. Other analysts have pointed out that stocks have rallied in the months leading up to, and for at least six months after a...

David Scutt, Business Insider Australia August 17, 2015 The slumber in China’s stock market came to an abrupt end this afternoon with markets plunging into the close. The benchmark Shanghai Composite index finished down 6.12% at 3,749.1 points, its largest percentage decline since July 27. Providing an indication of the price action seen in recent months, the fall was only the sixth-largest percentage decline so far in 2015. Over the past 12 months the index is still up by 67%. All sectors finished deep in the red with telecommunications, IT, industrials, materials, consumer cyclicals and utilities all falling by more...

McClellan is bullish today, but he expects definitive peak in stocks between Aug. 20 and Aug. 26 Tom McClellan loves doing what financial advisers tell you not to do. He tries to time the financial markets — to the exact day, if his charts align just right. At the moment, they are telling him to be bullish on the stock market for all of his trading time frames, including those that trade every few days, weeks and months. But bulls should be ready to flee, as soon as this week. That’s because McClellan said his timing models suggest “THE” top...

Did you see what just happened? The devaluation of the yuan by China triggered the largest one day drop for that currency in the modern era. This caused other global currencies to crash relative to the U.S. dollar, the price of oil hit a six year low, and stock markets all over the world were rattled. The Dow fell 212 points on Tuesday, and Apple stock plummeted another 5 percent. As we hurtle toward the absolutely critical months of September and October, the unraveling of the global financial system is beginning to accelerate. At this point, it is not...

China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations“Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” Luke 21:26 (KJV) When the banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy room to heal. Time is now rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost...

China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations It is only a matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty expectations and record valuations. Photo: Reuters When the banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy room to heal. Time is now rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost control and at the same...

Ben MoshinskyAugust. 12, 2015 Societe Generale strategist Albert Edwards may have finally out-beared himself. He warns the China devaluation is a step toward "a financial-market rout every bit as large as 2008." In his new note, Edwards says the Chinese currency devaluation is the beginning of a period of serious foreign-exchange weaknesses in Asia. This will force down import prices into the US and EU economies, aggravating a deflationary cycle that hits corporate profits and ending in a Lehman-style crisis: We expect the acceleration of EM devaluations to send waves of deflation to the west to overwhelm already struggling corporate...

As China contends with an economic slowdown and a stock market slump, the authorities on Tuesday sharply devalued the country’s currency, the renminbi, a move that could raise geopolitical tensions and weigh on growth elsewhere. The central bank set the official value of the renminbi nearly 2 percent weaker against the dollar. The devaluation is the largest since China’s modern exchange-rate system was introduced at the start of 1994. China’s abrupt devaluation is the clearest sign yet of mounting concern in Beijing that the country could fall short of its goal of roughly 7 percent economic growth this year. Growth...

Rodney Johnson July 20, 2015There’s a village in Japan where the dead outnumber the living, and I don’t mean the ancestors in the cemetery. The bodies are dispersed around the small town of Nagoro. It’s a small community of some 35 people, most in their 60s or older. The place is so sparsely populated that the locals consider their 150-plus dead a part of their community. OK, so they aren’t literal dead bodies. Instead, the locals erected scarecrow-like figures in their likeness. Scarecrows fill the schoolhouse whose students long since graduated. They wait by an old bus stop, even though...

Although it’s not possible to know exactly what the mood is among Party officials in China regarding the inexorable slide in stock prices that’s unfolded over the course of the last three weeks, it’s reasonable to assume that at least some officials in Beijing are in the throes of Politburo panic after watching some $3 trillion in market value disappear into thin (and probably polluted) air. Amid the turmoil, China has resorted to an eye-watering array of policy maneuvers, pronouncements, and plunge protection schemes aimed at arresting the slide. Nothing has worked. Not suspending compulsory liquidation for unmet margin calls,...

WHILE the world worries about Greece, there’s an even bigger problem closer to home: China. A stock market crash there has seen $3.2 trillion wiped from the value of Chinese shares in just three weeks, triggering an emergency response from the government and warnings of “monstrous” public disorder. • LATEST: CHINESE INVESTORS FLEE FOR SAFETY And the effects for Australia could be serious, affecting our key commodity exports and sparking the beginning of a period of recession-like conditions. “State-owned newspapers have used their strongest language yet, telling people ‘not to lose their minds’ and ‘not to bury themselves in horror...

In 2011 the biggest fear from the Greek financial crisis was that it would cause a ripple effect throughout the global economy. But despite years given to de-leverage themselves, banks worldwide are still exposed to Greece, carrying more derivatives than ever tied to the tiny European state. Now that the Greek citizens have rejected the austerity measures proposed by the EU, we are facing a real potential of a Greek default, which could trigger a cascade collapse of credit default swaps and cause the implosion of the German central bank. Then, a continent away, we are facing trouble of a...

Wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con. Once upon a time in America, no adult could survive without possessing a finely tuned BS detector. Herman Melville masterfully captured America's fascination with cons and con artists in his 1857 classic The Confidence-Man, which I discussed in The Con in Confidence (October 4, 2006). An essential component of the American ethos is: don't be a chump. Don't fall for the con. And if you do, it's your own fault. The Wild West wasn't just thieves shooting people in the back (your classic "gunfight" in the real West)--it...

The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” — Henry Hazlitt, “Economics in One Lesson” One of the greatest fallacies of recent generations is the argument that free market capitalism has failed and that said failure is responsible for America’s moribund economy, the ongoing destruction of the middle...

E&P earnings are coming in and the impression we’re left with is that natural gas investment in Marcellus is being reduced, while oil overall appears to be incrementally ramping up versus prior guidance. Also, production overall for 1Q15 has exceeded sell side expectations as well, as reported by many public companies. Noble (NBL) reported that it’s cutting investment in the Marcellus by some $200M in response to the Nat Gas price crash. This is on top of prior production reductions at Chesapeake (CHK) & Range Resources (RRC). However, the Ponzi game in shale oil, having to continuously drill to replace...

Best-selling author Harry Dent says the stock bubble we have today is the biggest in history.  Dent contends, “Now we’re in a third bubble, and each of these bubbles peaks at higher highs, and then they each crash to lower lows.” “We’ve been looking for the Dow to peak right around here between 17,000 and 19,000.  So, we are right in the middle.  We are looking for an even bigger correction likely in late 2016 to 2017.  This whole thing has been in an artificial bubble” “We’d be in a depression right now if it were not for $11 trillion...

"This gap between the 1% and the rest of America, and between the US and the rest of the world, cannot and will not persist," warns renowned trader Paul Tudor Jones during his recent TED Talks speech, as he addressed the question - can capital be just? Hoping to expand the "narrow definitions of capitalism," that threaten the underpinnings of society, Tudor Jones exclaims, "we're in the middle of a disastrous market mania," adding "one of worst of my life." Perhaps most ominously, he concludes, historically this ends "by revolution, higher taxes or wars. None are on my bucket list."...

We keep waiting for the bust, the gigantic rollover of oil companies that just plain collapse under their own weight and the $50 price that you get for West Texas Intermediate. It hasn't happened. We keep waiting for the junk bond market that is riddled with $200 billion in oil and gas paper to be crushed by defaults and restructurings. It hasn't been. In fact, the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bd, the high-yield exchange-traded fund that includes a lot of this suspect paper, is pretty much unchanged for the last three years and has enjoyed a sustained rally...