Tag Archive: Finance

How to Invest in the New World Order

2016-12-26

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2016-12-26

In our latest Toward a New World Order, Part III we ended by promising to look closer at investment implications from the political and economic shift we currently find ourselves in; and that story must begin with the dollar.

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Credit Suisse Settles With DOJ For $5.3 Billion; Will Pay $2.5 Billion Civil Penalty

2016-12-25

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2016-12-25

Credit Suisse
Shortly after last night's news that Deutsche Bank had settled with the DOJ for $7.2 billion, of which it would pay $3.1 billion in a civil penalty, far lower than the $14 billion number initially speculated (the stock popped as much as 4% before settling just over 2% higher currently), Credit Suisse likewise closed the books on its pre-crisis RMBS fraud when the largest Swiss bank agreed to pay $5.28 billion to resolve a U.S.

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Who Has To Work The Longest To Afford An iPhone?

2016-12-13

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2016-12-13

Time Required for Iphone 6
How many hours must you work to buy a new iPhone? It varies dramatically around the world, reflecting disparities in productivity and purchasing power. According to a recent report by UBS that aims to measure well-being by estimating how many minutes workers in various countries must work to afford either an iphone, a Big Mac, a kilo of bread or a kilo of rice, the average worker in Zurich or New York can buy an iPhone 6 in under three working days.

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Swiss 10 year bond yields still negative, but approaching zero.

2016-12-12

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2016-12-12

Treasury Yields
The global bond rout returned with a bang, sending 10Y US Treasury yields as much as six basis points higher to 2.53%, the highest level in over two years. The selloff happened as oil prices surged by more than 5% following Saturday's agreement by NOPEC nations agreed to slash production, leading to rising inflation pressures. At last check, the 10Y was trading at 2.505%, up from 2.462% at Friday and on track for its highest close since September...

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Gold In London And Hong Kong Is Used To Settle COMEX Futures

2016-12-08

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2016-12-08

Exhibit 1.
Physical gold located in Hong Kong and London is used to settle COMEX gold futures contracts through “Exchange For Physical” trading in the over-the-counter market. This post is a sequel to Understanding GOFO And The Gold Wholesale Market and COMEX Gold Futures Can Be Settled Directly With Eligible Inventory - in which Exchange For Physical (EFP) trading is explained and how it can increase or decrease open interest at the COMEX.

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Q1 – Q3 2016 China Net Gold Import Hits 905 Tonnes

2016-11-28

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2016-11-28

Shanghai Gold Exchange SGE Withdrawals September 2016
Withdrawals from the vaults of the Shanghai Gold Exchange, which can be used as a proxy for Chinese wholesale gold demand, reached 1,406 tonnes in the first three quarters of 2016. Supply that went through the central bourse consisted of at least 905 tonnes imported gold, roughly 335 tonnes of domestic mine output, and 166 tonnes in scrap supply and other flows recycled through the exchange.

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Former CEO Of UBS And Credit Suisse: “Central Banks Are Past The Point Of No Return, It Will All End In A Crash”

2016-11-21

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2016-11-21

Remember when bashing central banks and predicting financial collapse as a result of monetary manipulation and intervention was considered "fake news" within the "serious" financial community, disseminated by fringe blogs? In an interview with Swiss Sonntags Blick titled appropriately enough "A Recession Is Sometimes Necessary", the former CEO of UBS and Credit Suisse, Oswald Grübel, lashed out by criticizing the growing strength of central banks...

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BIS: The VIX is Dead, The Dollar is the new “Fear Indicator”

2016-11-20

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2016-11-20

Leverage of US securities broker-dealer sector
Over the past few years, one of the recurring themes on this website has been an ongoing discussion of how the VIX has lost its predictive value as a market risk indicator. This culminated recently with a note by Russel Clark who explained in clear term why the "VIX is now broken." Today, in a fascinating note Hyun Song Shin, head of research at the Bank for International Settlements, the "central banks' central bank" has agreed with the...

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Did President-Elect Trump Just Inadvertently Kill The Golden Goose?

2016-11-19

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2016-11-19

Non-financial Corporate Business
President-Elect Trump may have just unwittingly sowed the seed of an equity market draw-down which will send even more protesters into the streets of America. Donald Trump’s stated economic policies are clearly pro-growth and if he manages to implement his pro-business, anti-regulation agenda, in the longer term they have the potential to surpass the bold and successful initiatives of Ronald Reagan.

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Gold Surges Post-Trump, Nears Heaviest Volume Day Ever

2016-11-09

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2016-11-09

Gold Flash Crash
Gold futures had their heaviest day of trading during April 2013 when a mysterious flash crash sent the precious metal collapsing with no clear fundamental/news catalyst. In June, Brexit sparked massive volume buying in the barbarous relic, but overnight, as a Trump victory became more and more of a reality, gold futures are approaching their busiest day ever.

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We’re All Hedge Funds Now – Central Banks Become World’s Biggest Stock Speculators

2016-11-08

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2016-11-08

CBS
At first, the idea of central banks intervening in the equity markets was probably seen even by its fans as a temporary measure. But that’s not how government power grabs work. Control once acquired is hard for politicians and their bureaucrats to give up. Which means recent events are completely predictable.

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USD ready for a second leg higher – then what?

2016-10-17

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2016-10-17

One year ago we showed the following chart to explain the relative strong dollar that was on everyone’s mind at the time. With a second leg higher in the US dollar imminent, this particular chart will be more important than ever. Claims to dollars, such as demand and time deposits, or even more opaque money-like products created by the shadow banking system is just that, a claim or derivative on the final mean of payment, namely base money.

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The Road to Fascism in Just Two Charts

2016-09-19

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2016-09-19

Laws of politics have been turned upside down. The Intellectuals Yet Idiots can make no sense of it. The underdog who ‘tell it how it is’ appeal to people while established reasoning does not.

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Mission Creep – How the Fed will justify maintaining its excessive balance sheet

2016-08-30

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2016-08-30

FOMC have changed their normalizing strategy several times and we now see the contours of yet another shift. The Federal Reserve was supposed to reduce its elevated balance sheet before moving interest higher as it would be impossible to increase the fed funds rate in the old fashioned way when the market was saturated with trillions of dollars in excess reserves.

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Academic Skulduggery – How Ivory Tower Hubris Wrecks your Life

2016-05-23

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2016-05-23

In the 1970s economists started to incorporate rational expectations into their models and not long after the seminal Kydand & Prescott (1977) article named Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plan was published. Their work has...

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Chinese Dragon: Breathing Credit Fumes

2016-04-24

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2016-04-24

Economic forecasting, no matter how complex the underlying model may be, is essentially about extrapolating historical trends. We showed last week how economic models completely fail to pick up on structural shifts using Japan as an example. On the other hand, if an economy doesn’t really change much, as in the case of Australia over the last thirty years, model “forecast” are generally quite accurate.

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OPEC’s Doha Dilemma: 3mb/d US lock in?

2016-03-29

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2016-03-29

Bawerk shows that more than 3 mb/d of American oil production was helped by US$55.5bn in credit facilities, by excessive debt. This production is now at risk and the debt may not be repaid. The big OPEC players are playing against US shale oil and some smaller OPEC members that have higher costs.

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Greenspan, the Sheepherder

2016-03-06

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2016-03-06

It is common knowledge by now that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan oversaw, enabled and approved of, a major transition in the US economy. His infamous “Greenspan-put” in which his actions at the central bank would be driven, if not dictated,...

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How Italy will fail and drag down the European Project

2016-02-23

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2016-02-23

Italy is big enough to matter (it is the eight largest economy on the planet), but so uneventful that most does not pay any attention to what is going on there. We contend that Italy will, during the next year or two, be on everyone’s radar screen as it has the potential to derail the European project for real.

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What the Fed Did NOT do

2015-12-18

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2015-12-18

We will not spend much time discussing what the FOMC did as tons of ink have been spilled on that already. We will rather spend more time on what the FOMC did not do. A short recap will suffice; the FOMC did raise the interest rate band by 25 basis p...

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