Tag: finance

Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

There is a very REAL plot to overthrow Trump led by the political establishment and aided by the mainstream press.. This is not simply speculation – this is the real deal.

Of course the Washington Post and New York Times are in full swing to get rid of Trump. No matter what it might be, the twist is always against Trump right down to the story how Sean Spicer wanted to see the Pope because he is a devote Catholic and was denied.

CNN, of course, is also part of this conspiracy.

You will NEVER find any positive article about Trump in mainstream media. Here is CNN and we can see that 50% of the top stories are always against Trump.

We have Boehner coming out saying Trump is a disaster. This is the guy who threw people off committees if they did not vote for his agenda.

The Kushner story is desperately trying to make something out of nothing.

Here we have after Flynn’s removal, Kushner suggesting setting up a direct channel for diplomatic purposes regarding Syria with the Russians. That is entirely within reason and has been done during confrontations in the past. It was not done, it was merely a suggestion.

The press seems to want war with Russia and absolutely nothing else. Not such link was established. So why is this a major story? It’s again RUSSIA.

Behind the Curtain, Republican Elites are conspiring to overthrow Trump (including Boehner) to protect the establishment. I have never seen such an all out effort to reject the people’s demand for reform.

This is HIGHLY dangerous for we can very well move toward civil war. Our model also warns that that United States can break up as a result of this by 2032-2040.

via http://ift.tt/2rkrZzA Tyler Durden

The City of Cleveland has fired Timothy Loehmann, the police officer who shot and killed 12-year old Tamir Rice in 2014, the New York Times reported.

The city also suspended a second officer who was involved in the shooting, patrol car driver Frank Garmback, for 10 days beginning Wednesday.

The city announced in January that Loehmann, Garmback and a third officer involved in the shooting would face administrative penalties.

Rice was playing with a toy gun outside a recreation center in Cleveland when, footage shows, Garmback and Loehmann’s patrol car pulled up and Loehmann almost immediately opened fire on Rice.

The shooting was one of several killings of unarmed black men to trigger protests and public outrage.

via http://ift.tt/2qydtRy Tyler Durden

US equity markets pushed back into the green this morning just as two heavyweight investors suggested all is not well in the land of exuberance. Blackrocks’ Larry Fink warned the equity market is not appreciating the message from the Treasury yield curve (and sees lower growth than Trump hopes for), while Omega’s Cooperman warned that markets are fully priced, and ahead of fundamentals.

Fink headlines from his comments at a Deutches Bank conference:

• *BLACKROCK’S FINK SAYS SEEN VERY LITTLE ON REFORM FROM TRUMP
• *FINK: EQUITY MARKETS REMAINER OF YR DEPENDS ON TRUMP
• *FINK: SAYS U.S. GROWTH IN MID-2S IS NOT HAPPENING
• *FINK: WE’RE STARTING TO SEE EXCESSES IN CREDIT MARKETS AGAIN
• *FINK: CREDIT MARKETS ARE RICH
• *FINK: MARKET ISN’T APPRECIATING THE YIELD CURVE

And Omega’s Cooperman was on CNBC:

• *COOPERMAN: MARKET IS FULLY PRICED, AHEAD OF FUNDAMENTALS
• *COOPERMAN: WOULDN’T OWN BONDS, VERY FULLY VALUED

But then added…

• *COOPERMAN: CONDITIONS THAT SPUR MARKET DECLINES NOT PRESENT

As BofA wrote just this morning, it appears equities are the last man standing…

With the Treasury curve below Trump lows, Hard data below Trump lows, and even Soft data now collapsing back to reality, stocks seem to know only one thing – the $100 billion a month of buying from central banks better not go away anytime soon!

via http://ift.tt/2rgtkp8 Tyler Durden

While Angela Merkel is busy sowing the seeds of the next cold war between Germany and the Trump administration (and therefore the US, if only for the next three and a half years), a troubling flashpoint for Germany continues to grow in Turkey where on Tursday, Turkey’s foreign minister said it is not possible to allow German lawmakers to visit troops stationed at Turkey’s Incirlik air base now, although he said Ankara may reconsider if it sees “positive steps” from Berlin. It was not immediately clear just what Turkey’s “demands” or expectations, monetary or otherwise, were from Merkel for it to change its view.

“We see that Germany supports everything that is against Turkey,” Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara. “Under these circumstances it is not possible for us to open Incirlik to German lawmakers right now … If they take positive steps in the future we can reconsider.”

Turkey has prevented German lawmakers from visiting the roughly 250 troops stationed at Incirlik as part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, saying that Berlin needs to improve its attitude first.

According to Reuters, Cavusoglu also said the issue would be discussed with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who is due to visit Turkey on Monday. Ties between the NATO allies deteriorated sharply in the run-up to Turkey’s April 16 referendum that handed President Tayyip Erdogan stronger presidential powers.

The recent deterioration in relations between Germany and Turkey developed when Germany, citing security concerns, banned some Turkish politicians from addressing rallies of expatriate Turks ahead of the referendum, infuriating Erdogan. Ankara responded by accusing Berlin of “Nazi-like” tactics. Germany has also expressed concern about the widespread security crackdown that followed last year’s failed coup in Turkey. More than 100,000 people have been sacked or suspended from their jobs and more than 40,000 people jailed.

German officials said this month that 414 Turkish citizens with diplomatic passports and other government work permits had requested asylum since the attempted putsch. Berlin’s interior ministry has confirmed that asylum requests had been approved for a number of the applicants, a move that angered Ankara.

via http://ift.tt/2rkfrIK Tyler Durden

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

Housing is hot again, but lately it’s been overshadowed by flashier bubbles in government debt, tech stocks and possibly cryptocurrencies.

Still, the warning signs are spreading. Today’s Wall Street Journal, for instance, reports that homeowners are back to using their houses as ATMs:

Homeowners Are Again Pocketing Cash as They Refinance Properties

Americans refinancing their mortgages are taking cash out in the process at levels not seen since the financial crisis.

 

Nearly half of borrowers who refinanced their homes in the first quarter chose the cash-out option, according to data released this week by Freddie Mac. That is the highest level since the fourth quarter of 2008.

 

The cash-out level is still well below the almost 90% peak hit in the run-up to the housing meltdown. But it is up sharply from the post-crisis nadir of 12% in the second quarter of 2012.

 

In a cash-out refi, a borrower refinances an existing mortgage with a new one, typically at a lower borrowing cost, that has a higher principal balance than the existing one. This allows the homeowner to pay off the old mortgage and still have cash left over for other uses.

 

The growing popularity of cash-out refis has helped buoy refinance activity. After booming for several years, demand for refinance mortgages had begun to slow as the Federal Reserve began increasing short-term interest rates and longer-term bond yields moved higher.

 

 

Mortgage rates remain low by historical standards, though. The average rate for a fixed, 30-year mortgage was 3.95%, Freddie Mac reported this week.

 

Meanwhile, rising home prices have helped increase the equity homeowners have in their houses. This allows more people to refinance to capture the benefit of lower mortgage rates.

 

And borrowers whose homes are rising in value are often more likely to be interested in refinancing for cash. For example, in Denver and Dallas, where home prices have jumped, more than half of refinancers opted for cash last year, according to Freddie Mac.

 

To some housing-market observers, the fact that more homeowners are tapping their homes for cash represents a healthy confidence in the economy. It comes against a backdrop of continued gains in employment.

 

At the same time, the increasing use of cash-out refis causes some concern since, in the run-up to the financial crisis, borrowers used their homes like veritable ATMs.

 

Len Kiefer, Freddie Mac’s deputy chief economist, says this time has been different. Borrowers now are subject to stricter standards when they get a loan or refinance a mortgage. There is also less money at stake now than a decade ago.

 

Cash-out refis in the first quarter represented about $14 billion in net home equity compared with more than $80 billion in each of three straight quarters in 2006. On an annual basis, total home equity cashed out in 2016 was $61 billion, according to Freddie Mac, versus $321 billion in 2006.

 

“People have been using cash-out for years,” Mr. Kiefer said. “From a personal-finance standpoint, it can make a lot of sense.”

 

One example is a borrower using the cash from a refinance to consolidate credit-card debt that has far higher yields. That in many cases can produce a big savings in debt-servicing costs by replacing debt that has double-digit interest rates with a loan that has a rate in the low single digits.

Here we go again. In every cycle, destructive behavior like using home equity to pay off credit cards or take vacations or whatever starts to surge. And every time the banking/real estate complex trots out paid spokesmen masquerading as economists to explain that this behavior is perfectly safe because everything else is going so well.

This deception eventually blows up in their faces, the pseudo-economists are disgraced (See Realtors’ Former Top Economist Says Don’t Blame the Messenger) and the people suckered in by the experts’ assurances are stuck with bills they can’t pay.

If cash-out refis continue to soar in the second quarter, then housing is officially a bubble again — with one big difference: This time around it’s just one of many, which means the eventual reckoning will be a lot more complex and interesting.

via http://ift.tt/2rkacJd Tyler Durden

The Mexican peso tumbled more than 1% this morning, more than every other major emerging-market currency except the South African rand.

Bloomberg reports that traders were anticipating a victory for the opposition Morena party in this weekend’s gubernatorial elections in the state of Mexico, according to Win Thin, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.’s head of emerging markets in New York.

And the peso is back at one-week lows

 

Peso also hurt by negative sentiment towards emerging markets, as South
African President Jacob Zuma quashed a revolt in his own party, denting
optimism a more market-friendly leader will take over…

While hot money floods into EM bonds and stocks, Thin notes

“Markets got a wake-up call with regards to
EM political risk with South Africa, and may be re-pricing chances of a
negative outcome from this coming weekend’s state of Mexico elections”

via http://ift.tt/2qwjDpG Tyler Durden

Much of this morning’s interview between CNBC’s Steve Liesman and Dallas Fed’s Robert Kaplan was pre-scripted and uneventful, representing the latest canned discussion of the Fed’s rate hike and normalization plans. Specifically, the former Goldman partner and current Dallas Fed preident once again laid out a noted course for a fairly aggressive path of rate hikes coupled with reductions in the central bank’s balance sheet for the remainder of the year.

Still, there were two notable highlights.

First, Kaplan doesn’t think that’s because the economy is about to take off. Instead, the regional Fed president sees growth likely continuing on the path of about 2% and not the 3% or higher GDP boom forecast in President Donald Trump’s budget.

“Two things drive GDP: growth in the labor force and growth in productivity,” he said. “The problem is labor force growth is very sluggish. And my own judgment and our economists at the Dallas Fed think it’s going to continue to be sluggish the next 10 years because the population is aging and labor force growth therefore is slowing.” Despite his structural pessimism, Kaplan said he foresees two more interest rate increases in 2017 and a start to the the unwind of the Fed’s $4.5 trillion bond portfolio, a process which as BofA explained earlier could lead to some dramatic fireworks in bonds and stocks.

“I think that removal of accommodation should be done gradually and patiently.” Kaplan said the balance sheet should be “substantially less” than it is today but conceded that it likely will remain above $2 trillion. “I don’t want to put a specific number on it. If somebody says in the 2s, that sounds about right to me,” he said.

Second, and closer to the Fed’s real mandate of keeps stocks propped up, Kaplan said that while the record levels of the S&P500 aren’t yet flashing “worrisome signals” of an imbalance that risks derailing the U.S. economy, he did make an odd comment, saying that “some correction” in the stock market may be healthy for sustaining the economic expansion for longer.

“What I’m looking for is increased imbalances in the economy, increased leverage and other imbalances because rates are so low.  If there were some correction in the stock market that could even be healthy, but also looking at the stock market, other people comment on whether the P/E is too high or too low, what I am looking at is fundamentals particularly earnings growth which has basically been positive. So I don’t see a bubble out there. I don’t see excesses or imbalances. I am concerned that imbalances may build, but if you ask me today right now it’s manageable, but I do think if there were some correction also in the markets, that could actually be a healthy thing.”

Needless to say, this is an odd statement for the Fed – which explicitly controls all asset prices through interest rates and its balance sheet – to make, and if taken at face value suggests that Goldman’s recent rhetorical question, namely “whether Yellen has lost control of the market”, may be more accurate than it seems. 

via http://ift.tt/2rk5v1E Tyler Durden

Since 2007, Emerging markets (EEM) have under performed the broad market by nearly 80%. Below compares the performance of the S&P 500 to Emerging markets ETF EEM, since the highs back in 2007.

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Could this lagging performance be coming to an end? For this lagging performance to end, it first has to accomplish an important breakout, see chart below.

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

EEM has created a series of lower highs along line (1) at (2). This line was last touched in 2014, where it peaked and soon lost over 25% of its value. EEM is kissing the underside of line (1) again at (3), as the month of May is coming to an end.

At this time, EEM is facing a critical test of resistance, as it is kissing the underside of more than one line at (3). Over the past few years, this is a price point where buyers stopped coming forward. If EEM can manage a breakout at (3), it would send a bullish message to this lagging ETF.

 

Website: KIMBLECHARTINGSOLUTIONS.COM

Blog:  http://ift.tt/2nMNRyT

 

Questions: Email services@kimblechartingsolutions.com or call us toll free 877-721-7217 international 714-941-9381

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

via http://ift.tt/2rgojwI kimblecharting

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

Usually when CFTC data shows a big speculative position, it is easy to spot the corresponding mood amongst traders. For example, take the current situation with the Canadian dollar. There are record net speculative shorts, and that bias is obvious amongst hedge funds and other professional traders.

However, over the past few years, I have been puzzled by the building of a massive record net long speculative position in the WTI crude oil market.

The monster speculative long position doesn’t correspond to the general attitude amongst traders. In fact, without looking at the data, I would argue most specs are negative towards crude oil. The data does not jive with my anecdotal evidence.

I have written about the problems of solely using net contracts as a measure of speculative positioning before (Re-evaluating crude oil spec positioning). Increases in open interest, and dramatic changes in the price of the underlying asset can make some of these contract-only indicators less effective. This is why experts who focus on CFTC Data, often use net position as a percent of open interest. Adam Collins at Movement Capital has created a terrific website called Free COT Data that uses this sort of analysis. For those interested in CFTC positioning, I highly recommend Adam’s site.

When we transform net crude spec positioning to a percent of open interest, the recent rise does not seem so scary.

Yet I don’t think that completely explains what is going on.

For 25 years, the net crude oil spec position sat in a range.

Then in 2010, it broke out, and has been rising steadily since then.

Now maybe there has been a whole raft of new speculators entering the crude oil market. Maybe hedge funds are secretly long gobs of futures. I don’t know for sure, but I somehow doubt it.

If they were long tons of futures, I would expect to see them doing what they do with all their other positions – jumping on TV touting their idea, or writing up reports about why oil is going to $100. Sure there is the occasional crude oil bull, but nowhere near what you would expect if they had a record long position.

I don’t buy that this increase in net spec longs is a traditional increase in speculation. There is something different about it.

I don’t have any answers. But I wonder if we are missing a new player that may have entered the market.

I am not sure how China would be classified if they were to buy futures, but I think there is a decent chance they might not be classified as a hedger.

Since the 2008 credit crisis, Chinese crude oil imports have increased from 11.5 million metric tonnes, to over 35 million.

We know that over the past decade China has been ramping up their SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve). What if they are also trading crude oil futures?

It might explain the recent massive expansion in open interest and net speculative long position.

I understand the bear argument that crude oil is about to roll over due to the weak longs, but what if they are misinterpreting the extent of speculative long positioning?

There is no doubt that the supply side story is bearish. There is a wall of crude oil out there.

But what if the demand side surprises to the upside? What if everyone is underestimating China’s appetite? I don’t know about you, but if I were a Central Bank with too many U.S. dollars, I certainly would be selling the fiat currency and buying some real assets. And if you think about it, nothing is a better real asset than crude oil. It is storable, and most importantly, it represents a unit of energy that is the basis for man’s unbelievable productivity. Take away crude oil and see how many houses, skyscrapers, etc. are built. Take away crude oil and see how you get your fresh vegetables, or even your summer hamburgers. Crude oil is in the price of almost everything we build and consume.

China buying crude oil as a way to diversify their US dollar holdings makes complete sense. And don’t forget, China is not like Bank of Japan or the Federal Reserve. They aren’t going to announce their purchases ahead of time.

I know this theory is a little out-there. But I look at the recent expansion of crude oil net positioning, and it just doesn’t reflect what I see in the market. China as a big silent buyer is a much more plausible explanation than the fact hedge funds are net long record crude oil because they are so bullish.

via http://ift.tt/2samZf4 Tyler Durden

Seemingly dredging up old 'fake' news as new bombshells, CNN reports that Russian government officials reportedly talked about having possibly "derogatory" information about President Trump and some of his top aides during the 2016 presidential race.

As The Hill details, the officials' discussions were intercepted by U.S. intelligence, CNN reported, citing two former intelligence officials and a congressional source.

A source told CNN the information was related to finances.

 

Russians appeared to think "they had the ability to influence the administration through the derogatory information," the source said.

However, not only is The White House slamming the suggestions…

"This is yet another round of false and unverified claims made by anonymous sources to smear the President," a White House spokesman told CNN.

 

"The reality is, a review of the President's income from the last ten years showed he had virtually no financial ties at all. There appears to be no limit to which the President's political opponents will go to perpetuate this false narrative, including illegally leaking classified material."

 

The spokesman said the story plays "into the hands of our adversaries and put our country at risk."

But CNN itself admits this is all bluster…

…sources said the Russians claims "could have been exaggerated or even made up."

 

Sources declined to say specifically which aides were being discussed.

 

"The Russians could be overstating their belief to influence," said one of the sources.

Still, when has anonymous sourcing of unverifiable claims held the liberal media back from penning another Democrat narrative-confirming article to spoon-feed to the echo-chamber?

Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2017

via http://ift.tt/2qCnT1W Tyler Durden