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August 26th pre-market: “Talk about growth… hey have the sapphire product that is going to go in the iPhone 6 launch… this is the stock I have been recommending!“ – $18.88
October 4th: Chapter 11 – $0.97
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Trade Accordingly
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1rRXDNi Tyler Durden
It’s so difficult to spot nowadays…
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1rRXDNe CrownThomas
Gold had a torrid September and suffered further losses last week of 2.2%.
Gold in U.S. Dollars, 5 Years (Thomson Reuters)
The move lower in September was technically driven as there was no negative headline data, obvious reasons for price falls or indeed evidence of physical gold selling. Most of the selling was on the COMEX and gold remained firm in Asian trading throughout the month.
Indeed, the mood music for gold is quite positive – especially the appalling western relations with Russia, Middle Eastern tensions and attendant geopolitical risk.
One plausible factor for gold’s weakness is the ever increasing, “irrationally exuberant” appetite for the dollar globally which may be impacting gold.
Despite, poor economic data out of the U.S. in recent days, the dollar has continued to eke out gains.
Poor data has not led to the bounce in gold that one would have expected. The permanently levitating stock markets have seen weakness and this may be a prelude to much larger losses.
There is increasing evidence that the U.S. consumer is struggling and close to being tapped out. Indeed, housing data has been poor recently which suggests the recent housing boom could be on its last legs. The latter scenario is likely the case which will prove bullish for gold in the long term.
Technically, gold is vulnerable to a further fall to test its bottom from July, 2010, at $1,161/oz. This is particularly the case in the very short term, in other words, this week. A breach of the $1,161/oz level could result in a rapid fall to test $1,110/oz and the long term support at $1,000/oz.
Silver in U.S. Dollars, 5 Years (Thomson Reuters)
Silver is also vulnerable after breaking below key resistance. Technical support is at $15/oz.
Therefore, short term weakness is a real risk and those considering reducing allocations should sell in the short term. At the same time, it is important to remember that with market manipulations of today, technical analysis is not as useful a tool as heretofore.
The long term fundamentals remain very sound and those who are patient and focus on gold’s strong fundamentals and still robust global demand, especially from China and India, will be rewarded again.
MARKET UPDATE
Today’s AM fix was USD 1,193.25, EUR 951.56 and GBP 746.67 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,207.50, EUR 956.06 and GBP 751.03 per ounce.
Gold fell $22.00 or 1.81% to $1,191.80 per ounce and silver slid $0.29 or 1.7% to $16.81 per ounce Friday. Gold and silver both finished down for the week at 2.11% and 4.65% respectively.
Gold on the New York Globex was pushed to to its lowest level in almost 15 months at the open on Sunday night prior to gold in Hong Kong moving higher from $1,187/oz an ounce to $1,195/oz.
Singapore gold bullion markets, a key bullion trading centre in Southeast Asia, were also closed for a public holiday.
Precious metals are at multi-year lows. Platinum hit its lowest price since 2009, silver fell to its weakest since 2010, and palladium touched an 8-month low.
Gold premiums in Hong Kong were $1.20 to $1.60 an ounce to the spot London prices, in line with last week, even though there was a sharp drop in cash gold prices.
With Chinese markets closed for national holidays until Wednesday, an increase in demand should come about on the return of the world’s largest gold bullion buyer.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1rRXF7U GoldCore
Gold had a torrid September and suffered further losses last week of 2.2%.
Gold in U.S. Dollars, 5 Years (Thomson Reuters)
The move lower in September was technically driven as there was no negative headline data, obvious reasons for price falls or indeed evidence of physical gold selling. Most of the selling was on the COMEX and gold remained firm in Asian trading throughout the month.
Indeed, the mood music for gold is quite positive – especially the appalling western relations with Russia, Middle Eastern tensions and attendant geopolitical risk.
One plausible factor for gold’s weakness is the ever increasing, “irrationally exuberant” appetite for the dollar globally which may be impacting gold.
Despite, poor economic data out of the U.S. in recent days, the dollar has continued to eke out gains.
Poor data has not led to the bounce in gold that one would have expected. The permanently levitating stock markets have seen weakness and this may be a prelude to much larger losses.
There is increasing evidence that the U.S. consumer is struggling and close to being tapped out. Indeed, housing data has been poor recently which suggests the recent housing boom could be on its last legs. The latter scenario is likely the case which will prove bullish for gold in the long term.
Technically, gold is vulnerable to a further fall to test its bottom from July, 2010, at $1,161/oz. This is particularly the case in the very short term, in other words, this week. A breach of the $1,161/oz level could result in a rapid fall to test $1,110/oz and the long term support at $1,000/oz.
Silver in U.S. Dollars, 5 Years (Thomson Reuters)
Silver is also vulnerable after breaking below key resistance. Technical support is at $15/oz.
Therefore, short term weakness is a real risk and those considering reducing allocations should sell in the short term. At the same time, it is important to remember that with market manipulations of today, technical analysis is not as useful a tool as heretofore.
The long term fundamentals remain very sound and those who are patient and focus on gold’s strong fundamentals and still robust global demand, especially from China and India, will be rewarded again.
MARKET UPDATE
Today’s AM fix was USD 1,193.25, EUR 951.56 and GBP 746.67 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,207.50, EUR 956.06 and GBP 751.03 per ounce.
Gold fell $22.00 or 1.81% to $1,191.80 per ounce and silver slid $0.29 or 1.7% to $16.81 per ounce Friday. Gold and silver both finished down for the week at 2.11% and 4.65% respectively.
Gold on the New York Globex was pushed to to its lowest level in almost 15 months at the open on Sunday night prior to gold in Hong Kong moving higher from $1,187/oz an ounce to $1,195/oz.
Singapore gold bullion markets, a key bullion trading centre in Southeast Asia, were also closed for a public holiday.
Precious metals are at multi-year lows. Platinum hit its lowest price since 2009, silver fell to its weakest since 2010, and palladium touched an 8-month low.
Gold premiums in Hong Kong were $1.20 to $1.60 an ounce to the spot London prices, in line with last week, even though there was a sharp drop in cash gold prices.
With Chinese markets closed for national holidays until Wednesday, an increase in demand should come about on the return of the world’s largest gold bullion buyer.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1sZJql6 GoldCore
But…but…but… it’s an AAPL-derivative play, what could go wrong? The supplier of Apple’s oh-so-magnificent Sapphire Glass, GT Advanced Technologies, just filed for bankruptcy…
Do not worry though, the CEO seems very pleased, noting “GT has a strong and fundamentally sound underlying business.” Perhaps the reason for his optimism is the massive insider-selling that has occurred in the last few months… For once the shorts (45.7% of float) were right.
The CEO is optimistic…
“GT has a strong and fundamentally sound underlying business,” said Tom Gutierrez, president and chief executive officer of GT.
“Today’s filing does not mean we are going out of business; rather, it provides us with the opportunity to continue to execute our business plan on a stronger footing, maintain operations of our diversified business, and improve our balance sheet.
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Perhaps the wholesale dumping of the stock in the last few months by mamagement explains his upbeat perspective…
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Full brankruptcy filing below:
GT Advanced Technologies Bankruptcy Filing by zerohedge
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1sZJq4L Tyler Durden
If anyone’s bucket list includes hearing, and seeing, the unholy trinity of Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner whose actions have pretty much doomed America, today is your lucky day, because as part of the lawsuit brought on by former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg, the three legendary statists will field questions from prominent, and very flamboyant, lawyer David Boies. As has been reported previously, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg is challenging the terms of the 2008 bailout for the company he built into a global financial-services powerhouse before being pushed out in 2005. He is not challenging the bailout which prevented AIG from liquidating as a result of selling billions of default protection on worthless companies, and which avoided the all out, and much needed, purge of trillions in bad debt and just as worthless equity.
The testimony has the potential to be “exciting…this is the first time they’ve had people at this level in the witness chair,” said John Alan James, a professor at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business and chairman emeritus of its Center for Global Governance, Reporting and Regulation. Mr. James said he expected Mr. Boies to “drill” the witnesses and force them to answer difficult questions. “There’s going to be a major effort [to] get admissions of things that are revealing.”
The effort will fail. Some other details:
Starr’s suit alleges that the government went beyond the Federal Reserve’s legal authority in taking a 79.9% equity stake in New York-based AIG, and in doing so violated shareholders’ constitutional right to just compensation. In the deal, the government demanded the equity stake in exchange for providing an $85 billion emergency loan, which charged a minimum of 12% annual interest and was collateralized.
The suit also alleges that the government unlawfully was penalizing AIG, a point Mr. Boies hammered at in his opening statement last Monday. “There is simply no authorization in the statute to give the Federal Reserve the roving permission to try to find people that they want to penalize and then use its lending authority to extract those kinds of penalties,” he said.
The government maintains it acted within the law, with terms aimed at protecting taxpayers from the risk of loss. It says it set stiff terms out of policy concerns, seeking to avoid creating a moral hazard in which other firms might take risks on the assumption they, too, could get easy credit from the Fed, government lawyer Kenneth Dintzer said in his opening statement.
Protecting taxpayers? Avoiding moral hazard? Uhhh… what?
The Starr court filing, for instance, asserts that the government didn’t undertake any investigation or analysis to determine whether AIG or its shareholders should be penalized and, if so, how. It quotes Mr. Geithner as saying in his deposition for the case that the government “had no basis of having any direct knowledge of the nature of the risks they were taking.”
The filing indicates Mr. Bernanke also will be used as a source on this point. The depositions remain largely sealed.
Well, Geithner had no knowledge of anything, so that is hardly grounds for a lawsuit.
So in retrospect, the hearing will be a total waste of time because nothing and nobody will be allowed to provide a revisionist perspective on a chain of events that will inevitably end in the biggest market crash in history.
So, to help infuse at least some humor in what is otherwise a very tragic outcome, here is today’s caption contest.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1xW3Z36 Tyler Durden
Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man blog,
President Obama has long ago decided it is best to make war in video-game fashion (from high up, and preferably using remote-controlled devices), and it seems this is meeting with the public’s approval – some 65% of Americans are A-OK with the “drone war” according to surveys.
Admittedly, replies to such polls depend very much on how the questions are framed. Our guess would be that these questions contain no hints about the vast uncertainties involved and the many civilians killed in the process. Presumably not too many people know that in some of the targeted countries, entire communities are living in fear these days. Many people have lost relatives, who have become “regrettable collateral damage”.
Predator drone
(Image via wn.com, author unknown)
In the US some of the most interesting news sources these days appear to be comedy shows. British import John Oliver has decided to take a look at the drone war issue in his show, and it is quite an informative overview. The drone program is not only shrouded in secrecy, it seems obvious that the government itself very often doesn’t really know whom it is killing by remote control.
No doubt many ‘militants’ are terminated (which could be anyone in the Hindukush running around with a gun, which in that region means practically every male inhabitant), but when 13-year old children tell you that they “prefer a gray sky to a blue one because then there are no drones overhead” one thing is perfectly clear: future blow-back is created in great abundance.
By now pretty much everybody in the Pashtun-inhabited areas of Pakistan and in the Sunni-dominated parts of Yemen probably hates the US with a passion. In fact, it is well known that Al Quaeda recruitment in Yemen has been greatly helped by the drone war. For every militant killed, a bunch of new ones shows up to join the “war against the infidels”.
The entire process of killing people in secret without even a hint of due process is highly dubious, to say the least – even if armed fundamentalist radicals are the main target. Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown professor and former Pentagon official under President Obama, explained the US policy on drone strikes during a congressional hearing last year as follows:
“Right now we have the executive branch making a claim that it has the right to kill anyone, anywhere on Earth, at any time, for secret reasons based on secret evidence, in a secret process undertaken by unidentified officials. That frightens me.”
Here is the video of John Oliver discussing the topic on his show:
Surprise, surprise. As Mish reports, ISIS seems pretty much unfazed by air airstrikes and continues its campaign against Kurds living between the northern boundary of its “caliphate” and Turkey.
Let’s see – when the president first ordered “limited airstrikes for humanitarian reasons”, it was all over the news how “reluctant” he was. By now these limited humanitarian interventions have become a “war that could last years”. Mark our words, ground troops are on the menu next. As we have pointed out several times in the past, it seems highly unlikely that ISIS will be defeated by air strikes alone. If that were possible, Assad would have done it already.
Anyway, we’re not even sure that this is really the goal. Ultimately, the entire situation in the Middle East may simply be the desired outcome of a “divide et impera” strategy. This to say, permanent chaos may in fact be what was intended from the outset, and these occasional interventions merely have the aim of not letting any single faction become too powerful.
We are just idly speculating of course and cannot prove anything of the sort, but on the other hand, we can also not imagine that the people behind the constant meddling in the region were/are not aware of the likely results. After all, it’s not like it never happened before. Similarly, the inevitable blow-back from the drone wars may well be fully expected and be part of the calculus. The US government is even inventing non-existent terror groups it can attack (no-one in Syria has ever heard of a group by the name of “Khorasan”, which almost certainly is an US invention. But they will attack us any second now!)
After all, “war is the health of the State” as Randolph Bourne remarked, and constantly creating new enemies certainly has the side effect of keeping the State in fine fettle.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1xhhpU7 Tyler Durden
With ever louder chatter that the west will force Russia to exit the (EU-based) global currency messaging and interchange service that is SWIFT – essentially locking it out of transacting in “developed” currencies – and with correspondingly louder retorts by Russia that it is prepared and would welcome such a move as it would merely force it to abandon the petrodollar and allign even closer with China, there was one entity whose take on the matter had been largely ignnored. SWIFT itself.
Surprisingly, in a press release issued this morning,the member-owned cooperative, reveals that not only has it received “calls to disconnect institutions and entire countries from its network – most recently Israel and Russia”, but that it regrets “the pressure” as the “surrounding media speculation, both of which risk undermining the systemic character of the services that SWIFT provides its customers around the world.”
And if SWIFT has now gone so far as to distance itself from the source of such external “pressure” which needs no clarification, then surely the dischord behind the SWIFTean scenes is far greater than meets any mainstream media eye.
From the press release:
SWIFT and its stakeholders have received calls to disconnect institutions and entire countries from its network – most recently Israel and Russia.
SWIFT is a neutral global cooperative company set up under Belgian law. It was established by and for its members to create a shared worldwide messaging service and a common language for international transactions. SWIFT provides services to over 10,500 financial institutions and corporations in over 200 jurisdictions around the world. SWIFT is a critical service provider to the financial industry and plays a pivotal role in supporting international commerce and trade.
SWIFT services are designed to facilitate its customers’ compliance with sanctions and other regulations, however SWIFT will not make unilateral decisions to disconnect institutions from its network as a result of political pressure.
SWIFT regrets the pressure, as well as the surrounding media speculation, both of which risk undermining the systemic character of the services that SWIFT provides its customers around the world. As a utility with a systemic global character, it has no authority to make sanctions decisions.
Any decision to impose sanctions on countries or individual entities rests solely with the competent government bodies and applicable legislators. Being EU-based, SWIFT complies fully with all applicable European law.
More here
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1q3hmpc Tyler Durden
Its deja vu all over again from a week ago… stocks (up) and bonds (yields down) and USDJPY (lower) have drastically diverged this morning (just as they did last Friday over the weekend into Monday)… will it be different this time?
Today…
A week ago..
For some context, Trannies are up over 4.4% from Thursday’s lows…
as divergence grows off the lows…
Charts: Bloomberg
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1xW02eH Tyler Durden
After collapsing on the heels of a poll a week ago suggesting Dilma Rousseff was leading in Brazil’s Presidential election (and thus bad for business, more of the same lack of reform), the weekend’s vote – while confirming Rousseff’s lead – did not give her a majority and pro-business candidate Aecio Neves had a strong showing. Brazil’s stock market IBOVESPA index exploded 8% higher on hope that this may mean ‘change’ as Brazilians clearly signaled disenchantment with current policies… even as Rousseff is still the strong favorite.
As The NY Times reports,
President Dilma Rousseff emerged on Sunday as the front-runner in one of the most tightly contested presidential elections since democracy was re-established in Brazil in the 1980s, but she failed to win a majority of the vote, opening the way for a runoff with Aécio Neves, the pro-business scion of a powerful political family.
Ms. Rousseff got 41.5 percent of the vote, against 33.7 percent for Mr. Neves and 21.3 percent for Ms. Silva, electoral officials said, with 99 percent of votes counted.
While Ms. Rousseff, 66, is expected to remain the favorite going into the Oct. 26 runoff, the surge by Mr. Neves reflects disenchantment among many voters with Ms. Rousseff’s leftist Workers Party, which is seeking to remain in power amid criticism over a sluggish economy and a scandal shaking the nation’s oil industry.
…
Mr. Neves, 54, has signaled that he would put in place policies aimed at calming the markets, like easing controls on fuel prices and improving the transparency of public finances. A top adviser of his campaign is Armínio Fraga, a Princeton-trained former central bank president who now operates an investment firm based in Rio.
…
Mr. Neves has to lure the support of voters like Mr. Ferreira if he is to mount a more serious challenge to Ms. Rousseff. But Mr. Neves’s party faces some skepticism from poorer voters and corruption problems of its own, including a bribery and price-fixing scandal over contracts to supply subway equipment in São Paulo.
The race between Ms. Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla, and Mr. Neves, whose grandfather was elected president in 1985 but fell ill and died before he could take office, suggests that polarization could grow more acute.
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via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1q3be0k Tyler Durden
