Tag Archive: The Stock Market

Incrementum Advisory Board Meeting, Q1 2017 and Some Additional Reflections

2017-02-09

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2017-02-09

Yuan Onshore Weekly
The quarterly meeting of the Incrementum Advisory Board was held on January 11, approximately one month ago. A download link to a PDF document containing the full transcript including charts an be found at the end of this post. As always, a broad range of topics was discussed; although some time has passed since the meeting, all these issues remain relevant.

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The Futility of Predictions

2017-02-05

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2017-02-05

Artificial Intelligence
Back in late 2013 I wrote a piece on human nature which was in part inspired by the bullish exuberance exhibited by a MarketWatch article predicting the DJIA at 20,000 in the near term future. Yesterday afternoon, a bit over three years later, that prediction actually became reality and I’m sure the author of that article as well as many other like minded traders popped some champagne in celebration of their awesome ability to predict the future.

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US Financial Markets – Alarm Bells are Ringing

2017-01-18

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2017-01-18

When discussing the outlook for so-called “risk assets”, i.e., mainly stocks and corporate bonds (particularly low-grade bonds) and their counterparts on the “safe haven” end of the spectrum (such as gold and government bonds with strong ratings), one has to consider different time frames and the indicators applicable to these time frames.

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Regime Change: The Effect of Trump’s Victory on Stock Prices

2017-01-13

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2017-01-13

Dow Jones Industrial Average Index, Daily
On January 20 2017 Donald Trump will be sworn in as the new president of the United States. On the stock market his victory has triggered a lot of advance cheer already: the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by a sizable 7.80 percent between the election and the turn of the year.

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Attaining Self-Destruct Velocity

2016-12-03

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2016-12-03

Jump
Some Monday mornings are better than others. Others are worse than some. For one Amazon employee, this past Monday morning was particularly bad. No doubt, the poor fellow would have been better off he’d called in sick to work. Such a simple decision would have saved him from extreme agony. But, unfortunately, he showed up at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and put on a public and painful display of madness.

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Good Money and Bad Money

2016-11-26

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2016-11-26

Stock Market Cartoons
OUZILLY, France – Last week’s U.S. jobs report came in better than expected. Stocks rose to new records. As we laid out recently, a better jobs picture should lead the Fed to raise rates. This should cause canny investors to dump stocks.

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Dissection of the Long-Term Asset Bubble

2016-11-12

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2016-11-12

The Long Term Outlook for the Asset Bubble Due to strong internals, John Hussman has given the stock market rally since the February low the benefit of the doubt for a while. Lately he has returned to issuing warnings about the market’s potential to deliver a big negative surprise once it runs out of greater fools.

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Stock Market Volatility, Gold and the Election

2016-11-08

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2016-11-08

Comey and the Trio Infernal
Before this Monday, the S&P 500 Index went down nine days in a row. While this was almost unprecedented (or in any case, a very rare event) the decline was quite small overall. The timing of the pullback and the subsequent strong rebound on Monday suggests that Mr.

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Incrementum Advisory Board Meeting Q3 2016

2016-11-06

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2016-11-06

Is Stagflation a Potential Threat? The Incrementum Fund held its quarterly advisory board meeting on October 3 (the transcript can be downloaded below). Our regular participants – the two fund managers Ronald Stoeferle and Mark Valek, advisory board members Jim Rickards, Frank Shostak and yours truly – were joined by special guest Grant Williams this time.

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Recessions, Predictions and the Stock Market

2016-11-02

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2016-11-02

Only Sell Stocks in Recessions? We were recently made aware of an interview at Bloomberg, in which Tony Dwyer of Cannacord and Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research were quizzed on the recently announced utterly bizarre AT&T – Time Warner merger. We were actually quite surprised that AT&T wanted to buy the giant media turkey. Prior to the offer, TWX still traded 50% below the high it had reached 17 years ago.

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US Stock Market – a Spanking May be on its Way

2016-10-18

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2016-10-18

The stock market has held up quite well this year in the face of numerous developments that are usually regarded as negative (from declining earnings, to the Brexit, to a US presidential election that leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly). Of course, the market is never driven by the news – it is exactly the other way around.

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Is the Gold Bull Market Over?

2016-10-17

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2016-10-17

ABN Amro, Natixis and Wells Fargo have issued bearish calls on gold. Natixis even expects three Fed rate hikes next year. Pater Tanebrarum discusses these opinions critically.

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Gold Sector Correction – Where Do Things Stand?

2016-10-11

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2016-10-11

gold bullion
When we last discussed the gold sector correction (which had only just begun at the time), we mentioned we would update sentiment and positioning data on occasion. For a while, not much changed in these indicators, but as one would expect, last week’s sharp sell-off did in fact move the needle a bit.

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British Pounding

2016-10-08

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2016-10-08

Flash-Crashed. Earlier this morning the British Pound suddenly found itself on the receiving end of a 6% flash crash during Asian trading hours. Some of the losses have been recouped since then, but that will be of little consolation to anyone who may have been long the GBP overnight.

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The Fed and the Everything Bubble

2016-10-03

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2016-10-03

John Hussman on Recent Developments We always look forward to John Hussman’s weekly missive on the markets. Some people say that he is a “permabear”, but we don’t think that is a fair characterization. He is rightly wary of the stock market’s historically extremely high valuation and the loose monetary policy driving the surge in asset prices.

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The Strikingly Weak ISM Purchasing Manager Indices

2016-09-17

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2016-09-17

Factory
We are always paying close attention to the manufacturing sector, which is far more important to the US economy than is generally believed. The ISM index shows striking weakness.

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Gold Sector Correction – What Happens Next?

2016-09-01

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2016-09-01

The gathering of central planners at Jackson Hole was widely expected to bring some clarity regarding the Fed’s policy intentions. This is of course a ridiculous assumption, since these people have not the foggiest idea what they are doing or what they are going to do next. Like all central planners, they are forever groping in the dark.

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Incrementum Advisory Board Meeting, July 2016

2016-08-24

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2016-08-24

The quarterly meeting of the Incrementum Fund’s advisory board was held on July 19. A pdf transcript of the discussion can be downloaded via the link below. We were once again joined by special guest Brent Johnson, the CEO of Santiago Capital. One topic: Helicopter money.

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Party Like It’s 1999

2016-08-24

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2016-08-24

OUZILLY, France – The farther you get from the big city, or the international press… the closer you get to reality. The myth and claptrap disappears as distance shortens. Imagination gives way to fact. Gone is global warming, for instance. Instead, you find – as we did when we drove to Nova Scotia for a summer holiday in the 1990s – that it will be “75 degrees in Halifax again today… No relief in sight.”

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Yarns, Mysteries, and the CPI

2016-08-22

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2016-08-22

Several ill-defined economic data points were unveiled this week. Namely, the Labor Department’s July consumer price index report. According to the government data, on whole, consumer prices for the month didn’t change one iota. In reality, the CPI is so distorted and disfigured it doesn’t really tell us much that’s useful. Empirical experience and common sense are much better indicators of inflation and deflation. What’s more, you don’t have...

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