another site
As the 10Y broke solidly through 3.00% so precious metals began to move and after testing $20 in Silver overnight a few times, both gold and silver have just run stops through key levels and are jumping like Twitter (or Bitcoin) for a few minutes. WTI Crude has also just broke $100.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/b6zuaGYYVD0/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Debt is serfdom, capital in all its forms is freedom. The only leverage available to all is extreme frugality in service of accumulating productive capital.
There are only three ways to better oneself financially: marry someone with money, inherit money or accumulate capital/savings and invest it in productive assets. (We'll leave out lobbying the Federal government for a fat contract, faking disability, selling derivatives designed to default and other criminal activities.)
The only way to accumulate capital to invest is to spend considerably less than you earn. For a variety of reasons, humans seem predisposed to spend more as their income rises. Thus the person making $30,000 a year imagines that if only they could earn $100,000 a year, they could save half of their net income. Yet when that happy day arrives, they generally find their expenses have risen in tandem with their income, and the anticipated ease of saving large chunks of money never materializes.
What qualifies as extreme frugality? Saving a third of one's net income is a good start, though putting aside half of one's net income is even better.
The lower one's income, the more creative one has to be to save a significant percentage of one's net income. On the plus side, the income tax burden for lower-income workers is low, so relatively little of gross income is lost to taxes.
The second half of the job is investing the accumulated capital in productive assets and/or enterprises. The root of capitalism is capital, and that includes not just financial capital (cash) but social capital (the value of one's networks and associations) and human capital (one's skills and experience and ability to master new knowledge and skills).
Cash invested in tools and new skills and collaborative networks can leverage a relatively modest sum of cash capital into a significant income stream, something that cannot be said of financial investments in a zero-interest rate world.
We hear a lot about the rising cost of college and the impossibility of getting a degree without loans or tens of thousands of dollars contributed by parents. I think my own experience is instructive, as there is another path: extreme frugality.
At 19, my two sets of parents were unable to provide me with more than a rust-bucket old car. My father sent me an airline ticket to visit him, but nobody ponied up any cash for tuition, books, or living expenses.
Step One was eliminating housing costs until I earned enough to pay rent. By good fortune, I was able to secure a work-trade housing situation: I was given a room filled with boxes of accounting records, and a path through the boxes to a bathroom and tiny kitchenette in trade for yard work.
Step Two: cut all other expenses to the bone. Since I was working for a remodeling contractor, I needed the car to get to the various jobsites, but I bicycled whenever possible to save on gasoline. I prepared all my own meals and avoided buying snacks, drinks, etc. until my income rose enough to swing such luxuries. I can count the number of drinks or meals I bought on campus in four years on one hand.
Music purchased: none. (We played our own music or listened to the radio on the jobsite.) Clothes purchased new: none. (That's what church jumble sales/bazaars are for: $1 shirts, etc.) And so on.
Step Three: find a job with upside earnings and skills. I'd worked in snack bars and mowed lawns, but construction opened up opportunities to advance my skills and gain sufficient proficiency to deserve a raise in pay.
Since I wasn't guaranteed any opportunity for advancement, I volunteered to work Saturdays for my bosses or anyone else on the crew who had sidework on the weekends. I volunteered my construction services to community groups to gain experience (there's nothing like being responsible for the project, as opposed to just following orders) and open access to new networks of productive, accomplished people.
For example, I rebuilt the rotted redwood rear steps to the historic Agee House in the back of Manoa Valley for free. (Sadly, this wonderful building burned down a few years later.)
In business, the word "hustle" has the negative connotation of high pressure sales or a scam. In sports, it has a positive connotation of devoting more energy and effort as a means of compensating for lower skills or physical size. Step Three requires hustle: when you don't have any advantages of capital, connections or skills, you have to acquire those by hustle and initiative.
Step Four: apply for obscure, small-sum scholarships. $500 may not sound like a lot, but it means competition will be lower and if you get it, that's $500 you don't have to earn. As you build your networks in the community, put the word out you're looking for small scholarships for next semester's tuition. In general, people tend to respond more positively to helping you with a specific goal rather than an open-ended or undefined goal such as "I need money for college."
Step Five: work productively and ambitiously, i.e. work a lot but work smart. It never occurred to me that working 25+ hours a week and taking a full load of classes (4-5 classes and 15+ credits a semester) was something to bemoan–I was having a great time, and earned a 3.5 grade point average and my B.A. in four years.
60-hour work weeks should be considered the minimum effort necessary–but only if those hours are 100% productive work, not hours interrupted with games, phone calls, goofing off, etc. Those 60 hours are flat-out, power-out-the-work hours, not hours diluted by half-effort, distractions, etc.
Step Six: learn to do things yourself that cost money, such as maintaining your car. It's not that hard to change the oil and other basics of maintenance.
If you push yourself and maintain a disciplined life, huge amounts of work can be ground through in a few hours. This is as true of digging a ditch as it is of plowing through texts and writing papers.
Tuition at the state university I attended (the University of Hawaii at Manoa) has risen enormously in the decades since I worked my way thro
ugh college (roughly $9,000 a year now), but it's still possible to work one's way through if the student pursues all six steps assiduously and with perseverance and hustle and secures full-time work in summers.
One reason I did not bemoan working long hours and practicing extreme frugality was that this was still the default setting in a few dwindling enclaves of our culture and economy. The idea that you could borrow money for everything you wanted had not yet conquered the culture and economy: thrift in service of big goals was still a cultural norm.
In other words, what I did wasn't heroic or unusual; it was the norm.
I should mention that my university years overlapped with the deepest recession (at that time) since the Great Depression: 1973-74. Work was hard to come by, gasoline skyrocketed in price, and inflation started to outpace wages, especially in the low-wage jobs typically available to college students.
It was not a cakewalk by any means.
The upside of relentlessly pursuing Steps One – Six is tremendous: personal integrity, financial independence, and the other powerful freedoms that accrue to these foundations. Measured by income and things I owned, I was "poor." But measured by independence and by skills and networks gained, I was wealthy in many important ways.
Extreme frugality enabled me to not just finish college in four years but to buy a (cheap) parcel of land while still a student with cash and have a substantial savings account by graduation day.
I don't look back on those years of voluntary deprivation in service of independence, freedom, knowledge, and social and human capital as "poor me:" I see them as the extremely positive, productive template that I have followed in the decades since. I never did marry or inherit money, and so whatever I have now is the direct result of extreme frugality in service of integrity, independence and the accrual of capital that can be productively invested.
The only leverage available to all is extreme frugality in service of accumulating savings that can be productively invested in building human, social and financial capital.
Debt is serfdom, capital in all its forms is freedom.
Debt = Serfdom (April 2, 2013)
How Frugal Are You? (August 7, 2010)
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/AnxKqRiwAC0/story01.htm Tyler Durden
While a few media outlets had premature releases yesterday, Bloomberg data just confirmed that for the second time this year, 10Y US Treasury yields have crossed 3% (it was 3.005% in Sept 2013) breaking to the highest since July 2011 (right before the yield collapse after the US debt-ceiling downgrade debacle). We are sure the media will proclaim this as ‘proof’ that the recovery is different this time, except the term structure continues to flatten (suggesting less faith in the future) and to spice things up 30Y mortgage rates have surged to 4.63% – almost the highest since May 2011 – but again, apparently, this won’t affect the housing recovery either (even though mortgage apps are down two-thirds from their highs).
The last 2 times 10Y was at 3%, S&P was at 1340 (and fell considerably after) and 1650.
It seems WSJ and CNBC may have their bond math off by a fraction as Bloomberg never triggered until now…
Charts: Bloomberg
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/3aMcI6qsIfc/story01.htm Tyler Durden
On Thursday, Japan prime minister Shinzo Abe stunned the world by defying everyone – including the EU and the US whose embassy sent a tersely worded letter in which is said that it is “disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors” – when he visited the Yasukuni Shrine where Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal after World War Two are honored along with those who died in battle, for the first time in 7 years. The response was fast and furious. Below, courtesy of Reuters, is a snapshot of the morning after in the Chinese media. The reviews of Abe’s action were not glowing.
In an editorial headlined “Abe’s paying homage to the devils makes people outraged”, the Chinese military’s People’s Liberation Army Daily said Abe’s action had “seriously undermined the stability of the region”.
“On one hand, Abe is paying homage to war criminals, and on the other hand, he talks about improving relations with China, South Korea and other countries,” the newspaper said. “It is simply a sham, a mouthful of lies.
“Today, the Chinese people have the ability to defend peace and they have a greater ability to stop all provocative militarism.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Abe’s visit to the shrine “has already attracted the Chinese people’s ire and denunciation”.
“How can a person who is not willing to face up to their own history, to facts, win the trust of the international community or cause people to believe he has a role to play in maintaining regional and global peace and stability?” Hua said at a daily news briefing.
In a separate commentary published under the pen name “Zhong Sheng”, or “Voice of China”, the Communist Party’s People’s Daily said: “History tells us that if people do not correctly understand the evils of the fascist war, cannot reflect on war crimes, a country can never (achieve) true rejuvenation.“
The Global Times, an influential nationalistic tabloid owned by the People’s Daily, urged China to shut its door to Abe and other Japanese officials who have visited the shrine this year.
“If condemnations are China’s only recourse, then the nation is giving up its international political rights easily,” the newspaper said. “Ineffective countermeasures will make China be seen as a ‘paper tiger’ in the eyes of the rest of the world.
“In the eyes of China, Abe, behaving like a political villain, is much like the terrorists and fascists on the commonly seen blacklists.”
A survey on China’s Sina Weibo microblogging site on Thursday showed that almost 70 percent of respondents would support a boycott of Japanese goods, with many users expressing outrage at the shrine visit. The survey was later removed.
And yet, all of this appears set to blow over since China, like America, is now more focused on daily noise: the topic was not one of the most talked about on Weibo, with people being more distracted by the latest celebrity gossip and the upcoming new year.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/kfGLuruugOo/story01.htm Tyler Durden
On Thursday, Japan prime minister Shinzo Abe stunned the world by defying everyone – including the EU and the US whose embassy sent a tersely worded letter in which is said that it is “disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors” – when he visited the Yasukuni Shrine where Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal after World War Two are honored along with those who died in battle, for the first time in 7 years. The response was fast and furious. Below, courtesy of Reuters, is a snapshot of the morning after in the Chinese media. The reviews of Abe’s action were not glowing.
In an editorial headlined “Abe’s paying homage to the devils makes people outraged”, the Chinese military’s People’s Liberation Army Daily said Abe’s action had “seriously undermined the stability of the region”.
“On one hand, Abe is paying homage to war criminals, and on the other hand, he talks about improving relations with China, South Korea and other countries,” the newspaper said. “It is simply a sham, a mouthful of lies.
“Today, the Chinese people have the ability to defend peace and they have a greater ability to stop all provocative militarism.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Abe’s visit to the shrine “has already attracted the Chinese people’s ire and denunciation”.
“How can a person who is not willing to face up to their own history, to facts, win the trust of the international community or cause people to believe he has a role to play in maintaining regional and global peace and stability?” Hua said at a daily news briefing.
In a separate commentary published under the pen name “Zhong Sheng”, or “Voice of China”, the Communist Party’s People’s Daily said: “History tells us that if people do not correctly understand the evils of the fascist war, cannot reflect on war crimes, a country can never (achieve) true rejuvenation.“
The Global Times, an influential nationalistic tabloid owned by the People’s Daily, urged China to shut its door to Abe and other Japanese officials who have visited the shrine this year.
“If condemnations are China’s only recourse, then the nation is giving up its international political rights easily,” the newspaper said. “Ineffective countermeasures will make China be seen as a ‘paper tiger’ in the eyes of the rest of the world.
“In the eyes of China, Abe, behaving like a political villain, is much like the terrorists and fascists on the commonly seen blacklists.”
A survey on China’s Sina Weibo microblogging site on Thursday showed that almost 70 percent of respondents would support a boycott of Japanese goods, with many users expressing outrage at the shrine visit. The survey was later removed.
And yet, all of this appears set to blow over since China, like America, is now more focused on daily noise: the topic was not one of the most talked about on Weibo, with people being more distracted by the latest celebrity gossip and the upcoming new year.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/kfGLuruugOo/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Overnight Media Digest
WSJ
* Banks, hedge funds and commodity merchants are stashing tens of millions of tons of aluminum, copper, nickel and zinc in a hidden system of warehouses that span the globe. These facilities are known to some in the industry as “shadow warehouses” because they are unregulated and don’t disclose their holdings.
* Treasury bond prices fell Thursday, pushing the yield on 10-year notes to 3 percent, a threshold that may signal a new baseline for higher interest rates.
* Textron Inc agreed to pay $1.4 billion to acquire Beechcraft Corp, a deal that would combine the small U.S. plane maker into an industrial conglomerate that also produces Cessna planes and Bell helicopters.
* McDonald’s Corp has pulled the plug on its “McResource” website, an informational and budget-assistance website for employees that has become a target of derision from a group seeking higher pay for hourly workers.
* Wireless venture LightSquared Inc is seeking to exit bankruptcy-court protection with backing from private-equity firms Fortress Investment Group and Melody Capital Advisors LLC.
* Royal Dutch Shell PLC on Thursday said that it has renewed an option to buy the site of a proposed $2 billion ethylene plant in western Pennsylvania.
* Wall Street made millions of dollars taking Chinese banks public during the boom years when the economy was riding high and the country’s lenders were reaping big profits. Those same investment banks are raking in fees again, but this time by helping China’s financial system raise capital as it grapples with bad debts and thin capital bases.
* Starting in 2014, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc (ISS) is changing guidelines to recommend ousting directors who don’t implement a shareholder proposal that got a majority of the votes cast at the 2013 meeting. Previously, ISS recommended “no” votes on directors only if the proposal received a majority of all the shares outstanding. ISS is a proxy advisory firm, in which hedge funds, mutual funds that own shares of multiple companies pay it to advise and often vote their shares regarding shareholder votes.
* Toshiba Corp , one of Japan’s biggest diversified electronics companies, is aiming to buy a majority stake in U.K. nuclear consortium NuGeneration Ltd as it looks to foreign demand after interest at home waned following a nuclear accident in 2011.
* The Turkish owner of Godiva chocolates, Yildiz Holding AS, is bulking up in the confection business with a $221 million deal to acquire DeMet’s Candy Co, the U.S. maker of Flipz chocolate pretzels and Turtles covered nut clusters. DeMet’s is owned by Brynwood Partners, a Connecticut buyout firm known for plucking consumer brands from larger companies.
FT
David Cameron’s new wave of 24 enterprise zones is falling far short of the government’s target for job creation, with officials braced for them to deliver as little as 11 percent of their original 2015 target.
Gatwick airport is facing the threat of having to pay airlines a rebate after thousands of passengers were left stranded by a power outage caused by storms that battered the UK over Christmas.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was fighting for his political survival on Thursday, as a court-led corruption investigation looked set to spread from government ministers to members of his own family.
German pharmaceutical group Merck is seeking a partnership with an Iranian manufacturer to produce medicines in the country, in a sign that Western companies are putting their faith in President Hassan Rouhani’s reformist drive and an easing of international sanctions.
Siemens will start printing spare parts for gas turbines next month, becoming one of the first global industrial manufacturers to routinely produce metal products using the innovative 3D technology.
Amazon may have embraced the robotics revolution with the promise of drones making deliveries to your door, but Rolls-Royce has taken it another step and is predicting the first drone cargo ship will enter service in the next decade.
NYT
* Laptop maker Lenovo Group Ltd, which is also the second-largest smartphone brand in China after Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, wants to build on that success and begin pushing into the United States and other wealthy markets in 2014.
* With the next budget deadline just weeks away, top lawmakers said this week that they had made significant progress negotiating a huge government-wide spending bill that gives the once mighty congressional Appropriations Committees an opportunity to reassert control over the flow of federal dollars.
* The states of Massachusetts and Vermont that hired CGI Federal, an American unit of the Canadian-based CGI Group Inc , to build their online marketplaces for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act are threatening to withhold millions of dollars in payments to the company and even seek refunds following many problems and delays.
* Some lucky fliers capitalized on a computer error on Thursday to buy inexpensive flights on Delta Air Lines Inc . A spokesman for the Atlanta-based airline said the problem had been fixed, but that “Delta will honor any fares purchased at the incorrect price.”
* The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a private corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization, on Thursday said that it fined Barclays C
apital $3.75 million over its failure to properly retain records.
Canada
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
* Toronto Hydro Corp is rejecting the idea of burying power lines to avoid a repeat of widespread electricity outages triggered by an ice storm this week, saying the approach is too expensive and would leave the grid vulnerable to other problems.
* The search for a 22-year-old British backpacker who went missing in Vancouver on Nov. 25 has resumed. North Shore Rescue says crews have gone out on a helicopter above North Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain and Lynn Headwater to capture some air photos and search for Tom Billings’ whereabouts.
Reports in the business section:
* Investors in the Empire State Building have filed a lawsuit accusing the real estate magnates who took it public of short-changing them $300 million by refusing to sell the iconic skyscraper at a premium price. Peter Malkin and his son Anthony had put the landmark building and 17 other properties into Empire State Realty Trust Inc and took it public in October.
NATIONAL POST
* Five days after a major ice storm crippled energy grids across Eastern Canada, less than 50,000 people remained without power in Toronto on Boxing Day as work crews began arduous, door-to-door repairs.
* Fearing it may lose sensitive information on First Nations peoples, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs decided earlier this year to ban the use of USB keys to transport data, then realized instituting the new rule without an alternate plan was doomed to fail.
* More than 100 High River residents could have their properties seized for reduced compensation if they refuse an offer from the Alberta province to buy their flood-hit land.
FINANCIAL POST
* Sizable Boxing Day lineups outside big chain stores across the country on Thursday suggest online shopping has yet to kill the Door Crasher special. Despite some online Boxing Week sales that began on Christmas eve, shoppers lined up in the early morning darkness for the doors to open at 6 a.m. at stores such as Future Shop and Target Corp.
China
PEOPLE’S DAILY
– Thursday’s visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the Yasukuni Shrine that symbolizes Tokyo’s wartime aggression reflects rising rightist forces in Japan and implies that militarism has strong ability to survive in the Japanese society, a commentary by this newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, said.
– China aims to create 10 million new job opportunities in 2014 compared with a forecast of 13 million this year.
CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL
– Combined land sales income in China’s four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen reached 501.4 billion yuan ($82.6 billion) this year, up 150 percent from 2012, due in part to rising land prices.
– China is likely to kick off reforms of its announced state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by corporate restructuring, which is likely to lead to a reduction of the number of SOEs next year.
– Analysts believe traditional enthusiasm of Chinese investors for new shares will mean heated trading in listing debutants when stock initial public offerings (IPOs) resume in January after a suspension of more than one year to support the sagging domestic stock market.
CHINA DAILY
– China’s new media continues to be dominated by high-profiled users in 2013 despite an official campaign against online rumourmongers, according to a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
– About 70 percent of China’s state-owned companies will see their year-end bonuses paid to their staff members rise this year from last year, according to a survey by leading staffing firm Career International.
NATIONAL BUSINESS DAILY
– Zhejiang Ke’er Group Co Ltd aims to become the first Chinese textile firm to build a plant in the United States with a planned investment of $218 million.
SHANGHAI SECURITIES NEWS
– The Shanghai Stock Exchange issues its first guidelines for information disclosure by different industries, targeting property, coal and petroleum sectors.
– Rising costs of fund-raising are hindering the government’s plan of expand a pilot programme to securitise corporate assets.
CHINA BUSINESS NEWS
– China’s fiscal spending was slower than expected in the first 11 months of this year due in part to a government campaign to fight official corruption, implying that the country may not be able to fulfil its target of fiscal deficit of 1.2 trillion yuan for the year.
Britain
The Telegraph
INTERNATIONAL SHOPPERS BOOST BRITISH SALES ON BOXING DAY
Shoppers from around the world helped boost sales on British high streets on Thursday, with large numbers of Qataris, Chinese and Russians seen opening their pocketbooks – overall spending four times as much as people from the UK.
BRITAIN ON COURSE TO BECOME STRONG MAN OF EUROPE
Britain will overtake France as the world’s fifth-largest economy within five years and is on course to leapfrog Germany to become the largest economy in Europe by 2030, according to a leading think-tank.
The Guardian
TUC LEADER SEES OPPORTUNITY FOR UNIONS TO REBUILD MEMBERSHIP
The head of the Trades Union Congress has warned that the Grangemouth industrial dispute was a “wake-up call” for the trade union movement and has urged labour bosses to team up with politicians and civic groups next year to boost private-sector membership.
FRENCH UNEMPLOYMENT RISES TO 3.29M
François Hollande is struggling to keep an election pledge and cut the number of jobless as manufacturing falters and a possible recession looms.
The Times
‘SANTA TAX’ FINANCE CHIEF SET TO BE SACKED FROM DEBENHAMS
Debenhams is set to part company with its finance director amid growing criticism of his performance.
CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS FAIL TO STOP THE BIG DECLINE
Reports of the death of the High Street proved to be exaggerated as Boxing Day shoppers spent a projected 2.6 billion pounds on Thursday, but beneath the fairy lights and tinsel the malaise goes on.
The Independent
FCA RACKS UP RECORD 472 MLN POUNDS IN FINES IN FIRST YEAR
City watchdogs have racked up a record 472.3 million pounds in fines in 2013, with less than a week left in the year. The total in the first year of the Financial Conduct Authority represents a 51 percent increase over the 311.6 million pounds imposed in 2012, the last full year of the Financial Services Authority, which was also a record.
Fly On The Wall 7:00 AM Market Snapshot
ANALYST RESEARCH
Upgrades
FirstEnergy (FE) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Wells Fargo
Westlake Chemical (WLK) upgraded to Positive from Neutral at Susquehanna
Downgrades
Twitter (TWTR) downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at Macquarie
HOT STOCKS
Textron (TXT) to acquire Beechcraft for $1.4B in cash
LDK Solar (LDK) entered confidentiality agreements with note holders
Netflix (NFLX) users in U.S., Canada, Latin America reported outage issues
Perfect World (PWRD) sold Chinese online reading business to Baidu (BIDU) unit
ANI Pharmaceuticals (ANIP) acquired 31 generic drug products from Teva (TEVA)
NEWSPAPERS/WEBSITES
SYNDICATE
Ampio (AMPE) files to sell 1.5M shares of common stock for holders
ACTIVIST/PASSIVE FILINGS
Adage Capital reports 5.07% passive stake in HeartWare (HTWR)
Gabelli reports 5.37% stake in Lawson Products (LAWS)
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/YU7v5w_ESWo/story01.htm Tyler Durden
It’s the last Friday of 2013. Here is what happened overnight.
Source: Bloomberg
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/6KxmBFdsJh0/story01.htm Tyler Durden
After the USDJPY predictably, if briefly, touched 105.00 last night as expected…
USDJPY going for 105 tonight
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 26, 2013
… following some mixed data out of Japan including stronger than expected inflation and cash compensation, even if regular wages failed to increase for an 18th consecutive month, it seems that the entire move was driven to cash out a 105 one-touch digital option.
This morning, the stop hunts continue, only this time in the EURUSD, which has been on a steady upward trajectory and starting below 1.37 has crossed nearly 200 pips in the matter of 12 hours, and moments ago stopped just shy of 1.3900 where it seems another one touch digital threshold can be found.Depending on how much money the seller stands to lose should 1.39 be taken out, expect a fierce (or not so fierce) defense of the barrier.
Sadly, these kinds of intraday and year end shenanigans are now all too common, and the lack of liquidity and the preponderance of algo traders only makes the gimmickry behind the scenes that much more apparent. We wonder just which chat room cabal is responsible and will earn millions for the two manipulation of the two key currency pairs overnight, while retail investors everywhere are stopped out of their positions.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Fy-ec3wnBMQ/story01.htm Tyler Durden
After the USDJPY predictably, if briefly, touched 105.00 last night as expected…
USDJPY going for 105 tonight
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 26, 2013
… following some mixed data out of Japan including stronger than expected inflation and cash compensation, even if regular wages failed to increase for an 18th consecutive month, it seems that the entire move was driven to cash out a 105 one-touch digital option.
This morning, the stop hunts continue, only this time in the EURUSD, which has been on a steady upward trajectory and starting below 1.37 has crossed nearly 200 pips in the matter of 12 hours, and moments ago stopped just shy of 1.3900 where it seems another one touch digital threshold can be found.Depending on how much money the seller stands to lose should 1.39 be taken out, expect a fierce (or not so fierce) defense of the barrier.
Sadly, these kinds of intraday and year end shenanigans are now all too common, and the lack of liquidity and the preponderance of algo traders only makes the gimmickry behind the scenes that much more apparent. We wonder just which chat room cabal is responsible and will earn millions for the two manipulation of the two key currency pairs overnight, while retail investors everywhere are stopped out of their positions.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Fy-ec3wnBMQ/story01.htm Tyler Durden
As posted yesterday at https://www.smartknowledgeu.com/blog, by JS Kim, Managing Director, SmartKnowledgeU
Currently in Bangkok, Thailand, protests against the government remain strong with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands regularly gathering across the city in an attempt to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra from office. However, there are many reasons why such protests never achieve their long-term goals, even when they achieve their short-term objectives. For example, were the protestors to successfully oust current PM Yingluck Shinawatra from office as they so desire, the political system is so corrupt that another corrupt PM would just replace her. Therefore, the protestors, who fail to understand and attack the root of the underlying problems of corruption- the bankers that monopolize control of the country’s monetary supply- instead attack the symptoms and manifestations of the corruption. Thus, corruption will always remain. When a Prime Minister or President anywhere in the world states, and actually does, the following: “I will rout out all bankers that manipulate interest rates, stock markets, commodity markets, real estate markets, forex markets and every single banker that prevents free markets from operating within my country”, then that will be a politician worthy of the people’s support. Any politician that fails to do this is unworthy of leading their country and unworthy of the respect of the citizens whom they supposedly serve. Though there have been some violent confrontations among Thai protesters and police thus far, since the bankers that run all countries know that the people’s focus on a corrupt politician is a welcome distraction from the true culprits of economic malaise (them), they are willing not to escalate violence against the protesters. However, if the protesters ever turn their protests to the people they should be trying to kick out of their country – the banking elite – such tolerance will go right out the window, as it did with the US police and Occupy Wall Street protesters when the Occupy Wall Streeters brought much too much attention upon the corrupt banking cartels for their comfort.
Thailand Political Protests, Sukhumvit Road, 22 December 2013
Kicking Yingluck Shinawatra out of Thailand, as is the misinformed goal of the protesters, will bring no sustainable change to Thailand despite the minformed hope among the protesters that doing so will bring about a “better tomorrow” for their country. Leave the same corrupt bankers in control of your country and they will replace an ousted corrupt politician with another. One merely needs to learn from the mistakes of other misguided citizens. In Mexico in 2000, Mexicans were enormously ecstatic in replacing the corrupt Ernesto Zedillo and the 71-year ruling PRI government with Vicente Fox, until Fox revealed his true colors as a corrupt wolf in sheep’s clothing. In America in 2009, corrupt Barack Obama replaced corrupt George W. Bush, and so on and so on. There is an old saying that we must be the change we desire to be. The problem with this saying is that many of us will support corruption as long as we benefit from that corrupt leader because we have a “what’s in it for me?” mentality that is detrimental for not only the citizens of the countries in which we reside, but also for the citizens of the world. Until we can expand our horizons beyond our socio-economic demographic and beyond our countries to support integrity, honor, courage and justice for all peoples in all countries outside of our race, religious and political affiliations, and socio-economic statuses, we will continue to fail to bring about real positive change in this world no matter how many hundreds of thousands of people stand beside us and protest corruption in this world.
In the end, ousting political leaders is just about cutting off one of the snakes from the head of Medusa only to see another one grow back in its place. I spoke today to a good friend that attended the protests. He said that he spoke to an elderly woman that told him she was participating in the anti-government protests so she could leave a better country for her grandchildren. This false belief is precisely what is wrong with political protests of this nature, because ousting Yingluck Shinawatra from Thailand will accomplish nothing long-term in preventing corruption if the criminal bankers that back all corrupt politicians are not ousted along with her. If we desire real change, we must unite with all of our brothers and sisters engaged in similar struggles around the world and attack the individuals that fund these corrupt politicians and rout the money masters behind these politicians out of our countries first and foremost. And that is how we can bring about real, sustainable positive change for all of humanity. If political protests focused on the real culprits of economic instability within their countries, then they could be immensely successful in bringing about real change. However, as long as they focus on distractions and the players of the game rather than the real culprits, politicians will continue to sell all of us “hope” and “change we can believe in” and continue laughing behind our backs all the way to the bank.
Why Political Protests End Up Changing Absolutely Nothing
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