Financial Follies

Financial Follies

Leaning again on my short positions, here are three finance-related ones from my portfolio I wanted to share:  
Don’t Put All Of Your Eggs In The ‘Tax Cuts Are Coming’ Basket

Don’t Put All Of Your Eggs In The ‘Tax Cuts Are Coming’ Basket

It does not matter what you call it or how you explain it. The Trump trade. A tax reform rally. Heck, you can attribute the longest uptrend in history without a 3% pullback to global quantitative easing (QE). It makes very little difference. Stocks have been stupendous. Does a record number of trading days without […]
HH

                        Do ETFs Distort Earnings Announcements?

HH Do ETFs Distort Earnings Announcements?

From one perspective the move from active, human portfolio decision making to passive, computer-driven investment management mirrors societal trend shifts to various degrees. The impact automated intelligence has on a job function, for instance, transforms the human from a leader to a follower to various degrees. In a human / computer artificial intelligence integration project, computers often frame […]
Four-Day Losing Streak Breaks Aussie Down To Three-Month Lows

Four-Day Losing Streak Breaks Aussie Down To Three-Month Lows

AUD/USD Daily Chart Technical Outlook: Aussie broke below confluence slope support at ~7778 last night on the heels of a lackluster print on 3Q CPI. The decline is now targeting a critical support confluence highlighted in yesterday’s weekly technical perspective at 7630/65. A break below this mark risks substantial losses for the pair with such a scenario eyeing the lower median-line […]
Global Equities Pulling Back

Global Equities Pulling Back

US equity markets have been on a pretty epic run over the past few weeks, but today the major indices are finally pulling back a bit. We’re seeing mean reversion in international equity markets as well. We highlighted each of the 30 largest country ETFs (traded on US exchanges) are trading relative to their 50-day […]
New “Sell” Signal Triggered On Weekly SPX:VIX Ratio

New “Sell” Signal Triggered On Weekly SPX:VIX Ratio

I last wrote about the SPX:VIX ratio in my post of October 17. At the time, volatility was creeping higher, as the SPX was making new highs. As of 2:00 pm today (Wednesday), volatility has continued to rise, as the ratio dropped to just above the critical 200 “New Bull Market” level, as shown on the following SPX:VIX Monthly ratio chart. The following 60-Day 60-minute […]
Trump Effect: Wells Ups Government Service Names On Tax Cut, Better Fundamentals

Trump Effect: Wells Ups Government Service Names On Tax Cut, Better Fundamentals

This morning, Wells Fargo analyst Ed Caso upgraded CACI (CACI), Leidos (LDOS) and SAIC (SAIC) to Outperform from Market Perform while reiterating Outperform ratings on Booz Allen (BAH) and CSRA (CSRA), citing better fundamentals and the potential for the group to be meaningful beneficiaries of a reduction in the U.S. corporate tax rate. GOOD PERFORMERS […]
Two Startups That Are Making Cryptocurrencies And The Blockchain Incredibly Easy To Use

Two Startups That Are Making Cryptocurrencies And The Blockchain Incredibly Easy To Use

We see how fast cryptocurrencies are growing. Going from a market cap of $20 billion at the beginning of the year to $170 billion today, cryptocurrencies have been on a tear. One of the more remarkable aspects? They’ve expanded in spite of the difficulties that come with buying and selling them. Sometimes it’s not easy […]
The threat of water scarcity looms large

The threat of water scarcity looms large

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor finds himself trapped in the middle of the ocean, dehydrated and surrounded by useless salt water. Today, we are faced with a similar problem globally: while about 71 percent of the Earth is […]
Poor, Tailing 5Y Auction Stops At Highest Yield Since April 2011

Poor, Tailing 5Y Auction Stops At Highest Yield Since April 2011

One day after a mediocre, tailing 2Y auction, which stopped at the highest yield since September 2008, we had another mediocre bond sale by the US Treasury, in which $34 billion in 5 Year paper was just sold at a yield of 2.058%, the highest since April 2011, and a tail of 0.3bps to the […]