Category Archive: Finance
Swiss To Give Up Everything & Everybody
As of January 1, 2016, Switzerland is handing over the names of everyone who has anything stored in its Swiss freeport customs warehouses. For decades, people have stored precious metals and art in Swiss custom ports — tax-free — as long as they did not take it into Switzerland. Now any hope on trusting Switzerland is totally […]
Dollar Bloc Remains Soft, But Euro, Sterling And Yen Firm
The US dollar continues its mixed performance. The fragile stability of commodity prices today is not lending much support to the Australian and New Zealand dollars though the Canadian dollar is flat after yesterday’s slide. The euro has pushed above $1.09 for the first time this week. We had suggested a $1.08-$1.10 range would likely dominate this week.Technically, it […]
Why Getting Valuation Right Is So Important To Retired Dividend Growth Investors
Introduction Although getting valuation right before you buy a stock is critically important to the long-term oriented retired dividend growth investor, it is not a short-term market timing concept. My point is that short-term market movements are typically volatile and unpredictable. The reason is simple. Over short periods of time, which I define as less […]
EU Session Bullet Report – Oil Slumps As Demand Cools, USD Leading The Way
Oil recovered slightly yesterday and is currently trading above $38 per barrel although the black gold remains under pressure. Soft trade numbers from China on Tuesday highlighted the struggle facing the worlds’s 2nd largest economy, only serving to confirm concerns over cooling demand. Asian stocks were trading slightly lower this Wednesday morning reflecting current sentiment […]
When Does The Demographically-Related Pension Ponzi Scheme Blow Up?
Reader “GM”, an actuary student in Malaysia pinged me with an accurate observation on demographics, but missed the boat on a solution. GM writes …. I thought I would point out the reason for this monetary madness, which I believe you had brought up before. Aging populations consume less, and have different consumption patterns to […]
EC Negative Interest Rates Are Due To Bad Theory
If something very strange happens and continues over an extended period, people get accustomed to it and come to view it as normal. That’s especially so when the strange set of circumstances is the result of a policy that, as a result of devotion to a wrong theory or strategy, is widely considered to be […]
Euro/Dollar: Technical Picture Contradictory
Yesterday’s Trading: By the end of Tuesday, the euro was up against the dollar by 60 points to 1.0891. The Swiss franc was also stronger against the USD. The Aussie and the pound were down. The market is undergoing a correctional phase after the ECB meeting and Draghi’s words. Main news of the day (EET): […]
Corporate Loan Charge-Offs And Delinquencies Surge
Another Bump Higher In one of our recent updates on the weakness in the manufacturing sector we have mentioned the surge in the sum of charge-offs and delinquencies of commercial and industrial loans at US banks (hat tip to our friend BC, who inspired the chart below). As we were arguing at the time, this […]
The Latest Look At Long-Term Trends In Employment By Age Group
The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is a simple computation: You take the Civilian Labor Force (people age 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution). The result is the participation rate expressed as […]
Behold The Deflationary Wave: How China Is Flooding The World With Its Unwanted Commodities
Between commodity-backed financing deals and the centrally-planned mal-investment boom-driven excess capacity, China has a lot of ‘liquidation’ to do to normalize from a credit-fueled smoke-and-mirrors world to a painful reality. As Bloomberg notes, there’s no let-up in the onslaught of commodities from China. While the country’s total exports are slowing in dollar terms (as we noted last night), shipments […]
