Category Archive: 7) Markets

Main Author John Henry Smith
John Henry Smith
John Henry Smith of Grail Securities specializes in the U.S. stock market and offers a unique and powerful advisory service to private investors, institutional investors, and SME asset managers, who are seeking to consistently beat the market. All our strengths are at your disposal to provide stock market research and recommendations with the only aim of growing wealth. To achieve this we develop with you a customized investment strategy in terms of your risk and return preferences.

Fundamentals, Gold and FX Movements, Week September 30 to October 4

Our weekly summary of fundamental news on FX that aims to explains price movements, with particular emphasis on the possibly biggest mysteries: the gold price (GLD) and the Swiss franc (FXF) . The clear winner of the week was the Aussie, supported by a positive PMI and positive news from the RBA. In the previous …

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Fundamentals and FX Movements, Week September 23 to September 27

Weekly summary of fundamental news on FX with a focus on CHF and gold price movements. Weekly price movements The U.S. budget discussion and rather bad U.S. fundamental data made JPY and CHF the winners of the week. After weeks of improvements, the currencies of the Emerging Markets and carry trade currencies, like NZD, AUD …

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Fundamentals and FX Movements, Week September 16 to September 20

Weekly summary of fundamental news with a focus on CHF and gold price movements. Friday, September 20:The St. Louis Fed president James Bullard explained that the Fed was close to tapering 10 bln. $ and that markets overreacted after the FOMC with their strong performance. As a consequence the S&P500 inched down by 0.6% while …

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Futures Market and Brent / NYMEX Divergence



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A History of Oil Supply Side and the Oil Price



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Fundamentals and FX Movements, Week September 9 to Sept. 13

The weekly summary of global fundamental news with focus on CHF and gold price movements. Friday, September 13:The leading news came from U.S. retail sales and the Michigan consumer sentiment. Retail sales were up +0.2% instead of 0.5% expected, sales excluding autos and gas +0.1% (vs +0.3% exp.) The Michigan consumer sentiment disappointed at 76.8 …

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Excessive Money Supply: Switzerland Could Follow in Spain’s and Ireland’s Footsteps

In the Euro zone bank lending is contracting, M3 is rising very slowly. As opposed to that, Swiss bank lending is currently rising by 4.4% per year, M3 is increasing by 10% per year.

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Swiss home price to income ratio small in historic and global comparison

Based on four different data source, we find out that Swiss home price to income ratio is small in global comparison. Therefore we wonder why the SNB must contain home price rises, but the Fed must artificially increase them.

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High German Pay Rises: The End of the German Bunds Bubble

Yesterday’s German CPI has given a first insights of what is coming these years: German inflation. For years excessive risk averseness put pressure on German yields. Most recently, energy prices helped to push down inflation and on German yields possibly for a last time. But many ignore that the main reason for inflation are rising …

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Performance of global stock markets compared

A list of relevant graphs for the long-term price earnings rations and different stock market returns over the last 2 years. Moreover we show the return of the S&P 500 for each of the year.

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Swiss Public Discussion Switched from Floor to Housing Bubble

Why there is no real estate bubble in Switzerland yet and why the SNB will help to create one   With the current recovery in the United States the discussion in Switzerland switched from a discussion about the EUR/CHF floor to the Swiss real estate boom, the so-called “housing bubble”. It seems that the Swiss …

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2012 Posts on Markets

The UBS Swiss Real Estate Index in Risk Zone Again

The UBS Swiss real estate bubble index has reached the risk zone again.More on UBS.

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Seasonal Factors on Oil

Evidence from simple tests supports perhaps some belief that crude oil tends to have strong and weak months of the year, Q4 is often the weakest quarter and Q1 and Q2 the best.

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Before getting too excited about the IEA’s forecast of US oil production leadership…

Saxo Bank, recently called for quitting long Gold and "being scared" trades. For them shale gas & oil is the game changer for the United States. It should make the US the leader for global growth in the next years. The International Energy Association (IEA) declared that the US would be energy-independent by 2030. Today a nice article...

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9c) Bonds

This page is the top page for several articles on bonds.

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Marc Faber: Assets are overpriced, we short metals and Brent now

As we predicted on October 5 or one day later on DailyFX, metals have started their descent, silver lost one dollar, from levels around 35$ last week to 34$ now. Marc Faber joins our view and says that asset prices are quite vulnerable. “I’m not 100% in cash, for the simple reason that I could … Continue reading »

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Marc Faber argues against Jim Rogers

  The most famous investors Marc Faber and Jim Rogers were in a common interview on CNBC. Marc Faber is of our position, whereas Jim Rogers is still bullish on commodities.   Marc points out that China’s bench mark stock index the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index was at 6100 in 2007 even as it … Continue reading...

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Are German Bunds finally heading for the big slide ?

Citibank judges that the Swiss National Bank (SNB) does not need a peg anymore. The EUR/CHF exchange rate would be now over 1.20 even if exposed to the free market. Yesterday we showed that the upward move in the EUR/CHF is just the behavior of some euphoric Forex traders. In the meantime we see a completely … Continue reading »

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Volatility ETFs’ crazy churn

Two volatility ETFs (VXX and UVXY) are having almost half of the trading volume in the world’s largest ETF (SPY). How come?   First, the facts:   SPY is heavily traded (19% of assets daily turnover) compared to IVV (also referring to the S&P 500). But then come the volatility ETFs. Tiny VIXY (assets $145m) … Continue reading...

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