In the wake of Wednesday’s Fed announcement, the exchange traded fund (ETF) landscape was aligned with the consensus forecast for monetary policy.
Bear's Lair
Bear Markets always follow Bull markets and a severe stock market correction is long overdue. Bears Lair will spot, monitor and analyze the stock market correction as it develops.
When the Fed governors prepare to turn in for the night, their prayers undoubtedly call for some improvement in the economy. As noted Monday, the Fed is hoping the economic coals will take over allowing them to put away their lighter...
It is undeniable that behind closed doors, world leaders are worried about the global slowdown and the inability of the developed countries, after 5 years of relentless stimulus, to mount more of a recovery. Unemployment has become a...
Studies show that we all approach problems with an educational bias. For example, engineers develop solutions with math, and CFOs approach problems from a financial perspective. Therefore, it is not surprising that central bankers look...
Washington continues its pantomime, dominating the newswires with one internal deadline after another. The markets have been taking the process pretty calmly, almost enthusiastically. Wall St. essentially ignored the whole process. Yes...
Those of you who have experience with old-school charcoal grills know lighter fluid is used to prime the proverbial pump until the coals can take over. Quantitative easing (QE) is the Fed’s lighter fluid for the economy. The hope is...
The technology sector has been a leader of the market rally for almost a year, and this leadership has been manifested particularly in the Nasdaq 100 Index (NDX). However, the most recent push to new highs has been driven by a handful...
The good news is: The NASDAQ composite (OTC) closed at a multi year high on Friday while most of the other broad based indices closed at all time highs. The negatives: Negatives are hard to find. New highs, which have been lagging for...
The price of silver will hit new highs as an explosion of investment demand will overwhelm supply in the future. This once in a lifetime event will occur not because of bullish rhetoric, technical analysis or brokerage recommendations...
Silver may be the good news metal, but it’s about to have a serious retest of its “bad news” capacity.
A number of people have asked me to expand on how the rapid expansion of money supply leads to an effect the opposite of that intended: a fall in economic activity. This effect starts early in the recovery phase of the credit cycle, and...
Silver has suffered a rough year, but its fortunes are changing. In recent months its price has firmed at the convergence of multiple major support zones, a powerful technical launchpad. Silver has soared in parabolic uplegs from the...
The market’s bias remains to the upside. It could even be that the debt-ceiling fiasco in Washington helped to buy the bull market more time.
Hyperinflation is an insidious, economic killer. It inevitably (but insanely) creeps up on its Victims in plain sight, before decimating them with an always unexpected ambush. How can one of the most-obvious of all economic phenomena...
If you are relatively new to the markets, it is important that you take the time to understand how the Fed impacts asset prices. Clients often scratch their heads trying to understand how to match up tepid economic growth and high...
Tuesday’s monthly labor report provided us with an excellent opportunity to monitor investors’ expectations about the important battle between economic forces that create inflation and those that create deflation.
The prequel to this commentary summarized the anti-climactic ending of the U.S. Debt-Ceiling Farce, and the fraudulent non-reaction to this circus by the Western financial system in general, and Western credit-rating agencies in...
The Federal Reserve has injected billions of dollars of freshly printed money into the global financial system via quantitative easing (QE). If you understand how QE works in the real world, it is difficult to overstate the role it has...
The good news is: The NASDAQ composite (OTC) closed at a multi year high on Friday while all of the other broad based indices closed at all time highs. The negatives - The chart below covers the past 6 months showing the S&P 500 (...
A month ago the market seemed to be setting up for an intermediate-term correction. On the month-old chart below we can see a bearish rising wedge accompanied by negative divergences in price, breadth, and volume. Our comments at the...
The “good news” is that the latest Act of “The U.S. Debt-Ceiling Farce” has mercifully ended, and the curtain has come down on this puppet-theater. The bad news is that it ended (absurdly) with a mere three-month reprieve – before we...
The ultimate lynch pin for the silver market is the flow of physical metal to support ongoing price suppression. The flow of physical metal is mostly an illusion nearly equal to (and in some ways parallel with) the perceived strength of...
The Fed's capabilities to engineer changes in economic growth and inflation are asymmetric. It has been historically documented that central bank tools are well suited to fight excess demand and rampant inflation; the Fed showed great...
During the past 12 years silver prices have bottomed, rallied sharply, collapsed, and then languished for a year or more. The patterns are not identical, but there are obvious similarities as shown in the following chart. (Note that it...
I continue to read pieces in the media claiming the QE should not be stopped because it will hurt the recovery. I don’t understand this claim because there is literally no historical evidence that QE creates jobs in the first place.
We use the term “reserve currency” when referring to the common use of the dollar by other countries when settling their international trade accounts. For example, if Canada buys goods from China, it may pay China in US dollars rather...
This Columbus Day there were protesters against the shutdown, but even more against how the US government and how it is running. It's no longer Democrat versus Republican as the media makes it appear. Both parties have been found...
Markets tend to be a bit obsessive. In recent months, traders shifted from taper-gate to familiar political posturing in Washington, D.C. The next obsession may be earnings.
This in of itself is a strange claim as technically we hit the debt limit back in May and have been resorting to “extraordinary” measures since then. I don’t recall anyone in at the Treasury talking about the importance of the “debt...
Gold just isn't working as advertised as Washington flirts with disaster... THERE'S no denying that precious metals are falling even as the US debt-limit deadline draws so near, you can see that it's wearing a wig. In fact, the mere...
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