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The Horrific Derivatives Bubble That Could One Day Destroy The Entire World Financial System

The Horrific Derivatives Bubble That Could One Day Destroy The Entire World Financial System

Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Economic Collapse 

Today there is a horrific derivatives bubble that threatens to destroy not only the U.S. economy but the entire world financial system as well, but unfortunately the vast majority of people do not understand it.  When you say the word "derivatives" to most Americans, they have no idea what you are talking about.  In fact, even most members of the U.S. Congress don’t really seem to understand them.  But you don’t have to get into all the technicalities to understand the bigger picture.

Basically, derivatives are financial instruments whose value depends upon or is derived from the price of something else.  A derivative has no underlying value of its own.  It is essentially a side bet.  Originally, derivatives were mostly used to hedge risk and to offset the possibility of taking losses.  But today it has gone way, way beyond that.  Today the world financial system has become a gigantic casino where insanely large bets are made on anything and everything that you can possibly imagine. 

The derivatives market is almost entirely unregulated and in recent years it has ballooned to such enormous proportions that it is almost hard to believe.  Today, the worldwide derivatives market is approximately 20 times the size of the entire global economy.

Because derivatives are so unregulated, nobody knows for certain exactly what the total value of all the derivatives worldwide is, but low estimates put it around 600 trillion dollars and high estimates put it at around 1.5 quadrillion dollars. 

Do you know how large one quadrillion is?

Counting at one dollar per second, it would take 32 million years to count to one quadrillion.…
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Chart School

Gauging Investor Sentiment with Twitter: New Update

Courtesy of Doug Short.

Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.

The Downside Hedge Twitter sentiment indicator for the S&P 500 Index (SPX) is painting moderately high readings on up days and fairly flat reading on down days. This is a positive sign for a market making new highs. Even though there continues to be a very large number of tweets concerned with overbought conditions there are enough tweets showing excitement about higher prices that the daily indicator doesn't travel far below zero.


The concern about overbought conditions is showing up in smoothed sentiment as a negative divergence with price. As prices move higher more traders are showing skepticism. This indicates that the probability of a pull back in the near term is rising...



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Zero Hedge

Japan's Nikkei 225 Overtakes Dow For First Time In 3 Years

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by Tyler Durden.

Following an 80% rise off October 2012 lows, Japan's Nikkei 225 nominal price just exceeded that of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the first time since May 6th 2010. Though the Dow is around 8% above its 2007 all-time highs, the Nikkei remains 16% below its 2007 highs (and over 60% below its 1989 all-time highs). While the Dow is pushing its P/E towards 15x, the Nikkei just passed 28x - quite a 'valuation' difference. JGB futures - though not halted yet - are plunging notably (with JGB yields up 3-4bps). The last time the Nikkei was here a USD bought 95 JPY, now it buys 103... and 10Y Japanese government bonds yielded 1.29% against today's 86bps (compared to 10Y Treasuries 3.5% then ...



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Phil's Favorites

You (France) know you've gone to far when...

France's draconian move to collect more taxes is not only prompting high-profile wealthy people to flee, such as actor Gerard Depardieu, Europe's richest man, Bernard Arnau, and optician chain tycoon, Alain Afflelou, but has been judged "unfair" by France's Constitutional Council. Moreover, a top administrative court determined that a marginal tax rate higher than 66.66 percent on a single household risked being considered as confiscatory.

Taxes on some wealthy French top 100 pct of income: paper

(Reuters) - More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.

The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-...



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Insider Scoop

U.S. Steel, Genomic Health and Other Stocks Insiders Are Buying

Courtesy of Benzinga.

Insiders may sell shares for any number of reasons, but conventional wisdom is that insiders really only buy shares of a company for one reason -- they believe the stock price will move higher and they want to profit from it.

Pullbacks and sell-offs provide a perfect opportunity for investors who have faith in a company to snap up shares. Here are some stocks that have seen insider buying recently.

ACADIA Pharmaceuticals

One director, Felix Baker, bought more than 1.9 million shares last week. That was worth more than $24.9 million. This San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company has been discussed as a possible takeover target and it last week announced a secondary offering...



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OpTrader

Swing trading portfolio - week of May 20th, 2013

Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current  trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).

We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options. 

Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.

To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here

Optrader 

...

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All About Trends

Mid-Day Update

Reminder: David is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Click here for the full report.




To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...

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Stock World Weekly

Stock World Weekly

NEW: Newsletter writers are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.

Here's the latest Stock World Weekly! Just sign in with your PSW user name and password, or sign up to try it out. 

...

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Sabrient

Sector Detector: Investors stay focused on their Silver Linings Playbook

Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics

It seems that every Tuesday in 2013 since January 8 has been positive on the Dow. And this past Tuesday was no exception. Now that sounds like a trend to put money on -- buy the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) at the close each Monday and close out the position late on Tuesday.

The Dow and S&P 500 both hit new all-time highs once again on Wednesday, while the Nasdaq hit its highest level since November 2000. The “risk on” allocation of new investment capital into cyclicals continues, although Wednesday saw leadership from defensive sectors Consumer Staples, Utilities, and Telecom, along with Financials. Nevertheless, ConvergEx reports that the average correlation of the ten S&P business sectors to the overall index averaged 82% last month. While that is below the 86% averag...



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Option Review

Busy Day For Bristol-Myers Options As Shares Sprint Higher

Options brief will resume May 20th, 2013.

Today’s tickers: BMY, TIBX & WM

BMY - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – Shares in drug maker, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., are ripping higher today, up 6.5% at $44.94, the highest level in more than a decade, ahead of the release of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2013 Annual Meeting abstracts tonight. The ASCO Annual Meeting begins on May 31st in Chicago. Options on BMY are far more active than usual today, with overall volume topping 64,000 contracts by 12:25 p.m. ET, versus average daily volume of around 11,400 c...



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Market Montage

SPX Reaching Historical Extremes on Weekly/Monthly Chart

Submitted by Mark Hanna

Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.

We are starting to see some very extreme readings on our monthly and weekly index charts since there has been no correction this year.  I posted below first the monthly chart of the S&P 500 going back 15 years showing bollinger bands – rarely do we get above the upper one, and never have we been this far above.  Then below that I posted (with 4 charts of 4 years each) the weekly data and you can see we are at a rare time we are above the weekly bollinger band as well.  This non stop rally is getting very historical.

Monthly – we've never been this far a...



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ETF Selector

Stock Market Gets Big News After Friday’s Close

Courtesy of John Nyaradi.

Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.

Courtesy of NASA

The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.

For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...



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Pharmboy

Give Them an Inch, They Will Take a Mile

Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi.  Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward.  So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...



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IRA Strategy/Income Trader

Virtual Portfolios Update - 11/18/2012

FAS Money

$25KPA

$25KPM

AAPL Money

Peter's Strangle Portfolio

Income Portfolio

...

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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...

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