E Taking Profits On Our Short Russell 2000 Put Spread
I am going to use the Brussels terrorist attack to take a quickie profit on our position in the Russell 2000 iShares ETF (IWM) April, 2016 $112-$117 in-the-money vertical bear put spread. Profits have been few and far between lately, and a 7.26% profit in 11 trading days is not bad. At $4.77 we are […]
Two Down – Two To Go
The Federal Reserve’s years-long campaign to sheepishly back away from its own policy forecasts continued in earnest last week when it officially reduced the four expected 2016 quarter point hikes, suggested back in December, to just two. Given the deteriorating economic outlook, I believe there can be little doubt that the Fed will soon complete the capitulation […]
E Amidst ‘Alice In Wonderland’ Optimism
Amidst ‘Alice in Wonderland’ optimism – flowing forth to justify the expiration and post-FOMC rally of the past week, was an absence not only of anything that approaches realistic assessments of economic prospects, but a few things too. Among those: a sort of benign complacency towards extended market levels; an absence of all kinds of […]
New Home Sales At 512K – Better Than Expected
Slightly better than expected new home sales: they rise 2% to 512K in February, better than 510K expected. In addition, there is a small upwards revision from 494K to 502K for the month of January, easing the shortfall seen at the time. The US dollar is slightly stronger in the aftermath of the publication, but nothing […]
3 Strong Buy Goldman Sachs Mutual Funds
With more than $1 trillion assets under management, Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) prides itself in having more than 2,000 professionals across 33 offices worldwide, since its inception in 1869. GSAM offers financial services including investment and advisory solutions along with risk management expertise to institutional and individual investors throughout the globe. With its global […]
February 2016 New Home Sales Improve?
Written by John Lounsbury and Steven Hansen The headlines say new home sales improved from last month – and is in contraction year-over-year. The rolling averages smooth out much of the uneven data produced in this series – and this month there was a significant decline in the rolling averages. This data series is suffering from methodology issues. Econintersect analysis: […]
Stocks Stumble After Fed’s Bullard Raises Mutiny Concerns, Signals April “Live”
US equities are stumbling this morning, giving their bullish terrorism gains, as oil slides and voting FOMC member Jim Bullard appears to raise the specter of mutiny in the Eccles Building. Speaking on Bloomberg TV, he suggested he wanted to withdraw from the dot-plot forcecasts adding that he believes Fed policy is merely “in reasonably good […]
This Game’s Almost Over: Central Banks Are Running Out Of Options
Going into last week’s Fed meeting, the general consensus was that they would not raise rates. When they hiked rates by a quarter point in December, they projected there would be four additional quarter-point raises in 2016. That’s starting to look fishy as we’re almost a quarter of the way through the year and there’s still no […]
Silver Price Gives Back Near 61.8% Of Last Week’s Gains
Silver prices have nearly given back 61.8% of last week’s gains and the main motivator for the rally on March 16 was the set of dovish comments that emerged from the Federal Reserve. The central bank lowered the amount of rate hikes that they are now expecting to implement in 2016. Specifically, they referenced that […]
Gold Vs…
The pullback is on in the gold sector. We have very clear parameters for what would constitute another flash pullback and what would be a healthy correction. The former can last a day or two, and the latter several weeks. Today another flash pullback is happening but unlike on previous occasions, I am not planning […]
