Guest View
User: Pass: | become a member
Posts Tagged ‘Potemkin Village economy’

Non-Farm Payrolls: US Economy Doing a Great Imitation of a Developing Double Dip

Non-Farm Payrolls: US Economy Doing a Great Imitation of a Developing Double Dip

Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN

The September Non-Farm Payrolls report was not good news.

This is a remarkably unnatural US economic recovery, with gold, silver, and other key commodities soaring in price, the near end of the Treasury curve hitting record low interest rates, and stocks steadily rallying as employment slumps and the median wage continues to decline.

The US is a Potemkin Village economy with the appearance of prosperity hiding the rot of fraud, oligarchy, and political corruption. 

As monetary power and wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer hands, the robust organic nature of the economy and the middle class continues to deteriorate. 

This is what is happening, and monetary policy cannot affect it.   The change must come from the source, which is in political and financial reform.   And the powerful status quo is dead set against it.

The long term trend of employment has not yet turned lower which would make the second dip ‘official’ from our point of view. But the prognosis does not look good.


Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,




 
 
 

Insider Scoop

Long Setup in Herbalife Still Attractive; Stock Breaks Out as New Auditor Hired

Courtesy of Benzinga.

Few stocks have attracted more news over the last six months than nutritional supplement maker Herbalife (NYSE: HLF).

Even casual market observers are aware of the circumstances surrounding the the initial bout of extreme volatility in the name back in December 2012. The shares went into free-fall at the end of the year after hedge fund manager Bill Ackman revealed in typical sanctimonious fashion that his firm Pershing Square Capital Management was short around $1 billion worth of the stock.

Amid much pomp and circumstance, Ackman laid out his short thesis at a New York investment conference and...



http://www.insidercow.com/ more from Insider

Phil's Favorites

Most investors underperform their already underperforming funds

Interesting article by Joshua Brown on investors performing worse than the funds they trade in and out of. It's the same principle at play that Paul Price describes in his article: March Madness and Your Trading Decisions

Most investors underperform their already underperforming funds

Courtesy of 

At my shop we spend more of our time thinking about how we can succeed through behavior rather than through trying to find the next hot stock or fund manager.

We're always fascinated by those who choose the other, less rational route and we ...



more from Ilene

Zero Hedge

And The Band Played On...

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by Tyler Durden.

Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform blog,

A confluence of events last week has me reminiscing about the days gone by and apprehensive about the future. I’ve spent a substantial portion of my adulthood rushing to baseball fields, hockey rinks, gymnasiums, and school auditoriums after a long day at work. I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed every moment. Watching eight year olds trying to throw a strike for two hours can become excruciatingly mind-numbing. But, the years of baseball, hockey, basketball, and band taught my boys life lessons about teamwork, sportsmanship, winning, losing, hard work, and having fun. There were championship teams, awful teams and of course...



more from Tyler

Option Review

Big Volume In Saks Options As Shares Rip Higher

 

Today’s tickers: SKS, USG & PFE

SKS - Saks, Inc. – Timely bullish bets initiated in Saks options just seconds prior to the closing bell on Tuesday are generating sizable gains for at least one trader today, with shares in the high-end retailer up at the highest level since 2008. The stock closed Tuesday up 11% on the day at $13.67 after the company reported first-quarter revenue above average analyst expectations. Within minutes of the close shares in SKS moved sharply to the upside after the New York Post, citing a source familiar with the matter, reported...



more from Caitlin

Chart School

S&P 500 Snapshot: Fed Induced Bipolar Disorder

Courtesy of Doug Short.

With yesterday's dovish duo Bullard and Dudley to set expectations, the S&P 500 rallied in anticipation of Chairman Bernanke's congressional testimony and soared to its all-time intraday high, up 1.07% during his prepared remarks. But the Q&A deflated the balloon, and the 2 PM release of the latest Fed Minutes accelerated the decline. It seems that the possibility of tapering QE in the near term is not entirely off the table. The index hit its -1.23% intraday low about 30 minutes before the final bell. It then trimmed its loss to close down 0.83%. The 10-year yield jumped 9 bps to close at 2.03%, just off the 2013 interim high of 2.07% on March 11th and 37 bps off its 2013 low set 14 sessions back.

Here is a 15-minute look at the week so far.

Not surprisingly the volume on today's 2.32% high-low intraday range was 24% above its 50-day movi...



more from Chart School

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...

more from David

Market Montage

More History

Submitted by Mark Hanna

Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.

Doing a lot of data mining as we watch this market go parabolic.

The S&P 500 is 13.4% over the 200 day moving average.  10%+ is considered overbought, and 12% is very rare.

The current Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the S&P 500 is 75.  Over 70 is generally overbought (below 30 oversold).  To put in perspective in 1999 the S&P touched 70ish a few times but never hit 75.   The NASDAQ in 1999 – early 2000 hit mid 70s a few days in July 99 and Mar 00.  Then in the parabolic move in November and December 1999 (NASDAQ gained over 1000 pts!) it sat between 70 and mid 80s for most of two months; of course t...



more from Mark

Sabrient

What the Market Wants: No Easy Answer

Courtesy of David Brown, Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics

So, what did the market want today?  Nothing it appears.  It traded on weak volume and had very little movement.  This morning the market hated commodities especially silver, but by days end, the market liked silver, gold and even oil but not the dollar.  Why?

Last week the economic reports were tough, with bad misses on more than one occasion.  But the market tended to ignore the bad news, probably because money continues to pour into equities from money market funds, long term fixed income, and many struggling foreign economies.  On Thursday, investors finally caved to even more bad news from Initial Jobless Claims and weak Housing Starts.  Then on Friday, when Michigan Sentiment and Leading Indicators posted large positive surprises, the money came pouring back to generate qui...



more from Sabrient

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 

...

more from OpTrader

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. 

...

more from SWW

IRA Strategy/Income Trader

The IRA portfolio

Reminder: Craigzooka is available to chat with Members regarding his virtual portfolio performance, comments are found below each post.

By Craigzooka

I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis.  My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA.  Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis.  To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year.  These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.

  • We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
  • We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
  • We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...


more from Strategies

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:...



more from John

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...



more from Pharmboy



FeedTheBull - Top Stock market and Finance Sites



About Phil:

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...

Learn more About Phil >>


As Seen On:




About Ilene:

Ilene is editor and affiliate program coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site (blogroll, archives, more). Contact Ilene to learn about our affiliate and content sharing programs.

Favorites Site >>