saveyourassetsfirst3 |
- Are You Prepared for a Bull Market that Will Shock Even the Most Ardent Goldbugs?
- Gold and Silver - Counting Blessings and Tender Mercies
- Gold And Silver - Gann, Cardinal Grand Cross, A Mousetrap, And Wrong Expectations
- Loose Talk On China Gold Demand Sinks Precious Metals
- After A 50% Decline In Stock Price, Is Varonis A Buy?
- Links 4/20/14
- Dow Dogs Are Front Of The Pack
- BULLETIN: Newmont-Barrick merger talks kaput for now
- Abigail Field: Our Corrupt Tax Code
- Gold Carves Lower High in April- Bearish Below $1327
- Why China is a positive and not a negative for the gold price going forward
- Fed’s Stock Market Levitation Running Out of Steam!
- Nickel Aluminium prices look toppy Gold Silver boost short lived: Barclays
- LBMA defense of London gold fixing distracts from central bank involvement
| Are You Prepared for a Bull Market that Will Shock Even the Most Ardent Goldbugs? Posted: 20 Apr 2014 09:00 AM PDT
 Jay Taylor understands why investors in gold and gold equities are consumed with caution. But the publisher and editor of J. Taylor’s Gold, Energy & Tech Stocks and host of the radio show “Turning Hard Times into Good Times” urges them not to lose sight of the big picture. The big, bull-market picture. Gold juniors [...] The post Are You Prepared for a Bull Market that Will Shock Even the Most Ardent Goldbugs? appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Gold and Silver - Counting Blessings and Tender Mercies Posted: 20 Apr 2014 08:40 AM PDT marketoracle |
| Gold And Silver - Gann, Cardinal Grand Cross, A Mousetrap, And Wrong Expectations Posted: 20 Apr 2014 08:40 AM PDT marketoracle |
| Loose Talk On China Gold Demand Sinks Precious Metals Posted: 20 Apr 2014 07:28 AM PDT Precious metals started the week strong on heightened tensions in Ukraine, but the combination of misleading reports on China gold demand from the mainstream financial media and renewed interest in U.S. stocks by Western investors were enough to send prices sharply lower. Early in the week, the gold price rose to a one-month high at $1,330 an ounce and silver held the $20 mark, but both metals ended substantially lower. The trade-weighted dollar rose and the Labor Department's March inflation report showed only a modest rise in consumer prices when some analysts were expecting more, these factors also weighing on gold and silver prices. Big investment banks remain bearish on this sector and U.S. investors now seem to agree as gold ETF inflows earlier in the year have changed to outflows, a development that could signal even lower metal prices ahead. For the week, the gold price dropped 1.8 percent, |
| After A 50% Decline In Stock Price, Is Varonis A Buy? Posted: 20 Apr 2014 04:04 AM PDT Stock Analysis Varonis (VRNS), a big data analysis and mapping software developer, raised $121M in a very successful IPO in February. Varonis' stock surged on the first day of trade from the IPO price of $22 to its closing price of $44, reflecting a roughly one billion dollar market cap for the company. One month later, in March, five research firms initiated coverage on Varonis with an average price target of $46 (as shown in table 1 below) while the stock price was $44 that day at the close, reflecting a 6% upside for the company. Not the return you expect from a small cap software growth company. (click to enlarge) Since its IPO, Varonis stock has been unstable. Shortly after the IPO, Varonis' stock price climbed to a 52-week high of $53, completing a 140% increase from its IPO price. It declined from that point to around $27, losing |
| Posted: 20 Apr 2014 03:44 AM PDT Scientists Successfully Teach Monkey Theory of Evolution Daily Currant Attendance dropping at aquatic theme parks over claims of abuse and suffering Observer Jackson Hole landslide slowly swallows Wyoming town Christian Science Monitor Genetic testing a cracked crystal ball Nikkei U.S.-Japan Talks Said Unable to Overcome Deal Obstacles Bloomberg. As we predicted. A year after Rana Plaza: What hasn't changed since the Bangladesh factory collapse Washington Post Mount Everest avalanche leaves at least 12 Nepalese climbers dead Guardian The Risks of Everest Are Deadlier for Some New York Times Deflation in Sweden: Questions and answers Lars E.O. Svensson (MacroDigest) UN envoy and Israel in Easter row BBC Iran slams U.S. justice verdict on Manhattan skyscraper Reuters. More to this than you;d get from the anodyne headline. Ukraine
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Obamacare Launch
Insanely Rich Reporter Covers White House Meeting of the Insanely Rich Gawker Repeat After Me: The American Tax System is Hardly Progressive at All Steve Roth, Angry Bear Fed Bond-Buying Delivered 'Significant' Boost to U.S. Economy, IMF Researchers Say WSJ Economics. If the characterization of the paper is right, it stunningly conflates the financial economy with the real economy. The argument among experts is about how much QE lowered long-term interest rates. But as we’ve argued, that’s the old “loanable funds” fallacy, that if you put money on sale, businesses will snap it up and go out and invest. Anyone who has run a real business will tell you that’s not how it works. Their paramount criterion is whether they see enough demand for their product or service to support a larger operation. When It Comes to Generating Jobs It Pays Not to Listen to the Experts Beat the Press Wall Street deregulation pushed by Clinton advisers, documents reveal Guardian. The Rubinites were at it from the get-go. And Gene Sperling, who I’ve seen use the expression “middle class” as if referring to an alien species, figures prominently. Banks Cling to Bundles Holding Risk Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times Just Punch My Bankruptcy Ticket Pamela Foohey, Credit Slips. On the uselessness of mandated pre-bankruptcy counseling (and why are nearly broke people required to spend more money???). Note this sort of counseling was widely seen as another squeezing blood from a turnip exercise, but now we can say it’s official. Tech workers seek to have Steve Jobs' emails admitted as evidence in class action suit Reuters Sending Alerts Instead, G.M. Delayed Car Recalls New York Times Student debt holds back many would-be home buyers Los Angeles Times An Indictment of the Invisible Hand Truthout Antidote du jour:
And a bonus:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here. |
| Dow Dogs Are Front Of The Pack Posted: 20 Apr 2014 03:33 AM PDT Interestingly, we last highlighted the Dogs of the Dow strategy about this time last year and at that time the Dow Dogs were outperforming the overall Dow Jones Industrial Average Index. For all of 2013 the Dow Dogs of last year outperformed the Dow Index as well as the S&P 500 Index. As we turn our attention to 2014, the Dogs of the Dow are again outperforming many of the broader market indices except for the utility index and the transportation index. The Dow Dog strategy consists of selecting the ten stocks that have the highest dividend yield from the stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA) after the close of business on the last trading day of the prior year. Once the ten stocks are determined, an investor would invest an equal dollar amount in each of the ten stocks and hold them for |
| BULLETIN: Newmont-Barrick merger talks kaput for now Posted: 20 Apr 2014 12:32 AM PDT Nevada mining operation synergies which could have saved millions weren't sufficient to convince the world's two largest gold mining companies to merge, according to media reports. |
| Abigail Field: Our Corrupt Tax Code Posted: 19 Apr 2014 11:27 PM PDT By Abigail Caplovitz Field, an attorney and a freelance writer. She writes news for Benzinga.com and others, and posts a new blog every Sunday morning at Reality Check. Jointly posted with Reality Check Our nation’s tax code reflects our corrupt politics. The code contains many provisions that benefit our wealthiest, most powerful companies and people while hurting the rest of us. (“Our” most powerful people in the sense that they claim to be American, regardless of how transnational and unpatriotic they behave.) For Benzinga, I did a set of stories on some of the visible corruption in the code. Like the “carried interest” provision. That’s the income naming rights deal purchased by private equity, hedge funds and other extremely wealthy people with lobbying and campaign contributions. Income Naming Rights The carried interest provision lets these 0.1%ers call most of their income “long term capital gains” instead of “income.” The difference? About twenty cents out of every dollar. These folks’ capital gains are taxed at 20 percent; their income over about $407k is taxed at 39.6 percent. And given the salaries involved–the “best” hedgies can make $1 billion in a year–that adds up to meaningful money. (Best is in quotes because at least Steven Cohen, who took in $2 billion last year, made lots of money from his firm’s illegal trades.) On $1 billion, labeling the money income or capital gains means $200 million more dollars that are either paid in taxes and benefit all Americans, or aren’t, and just get added to the unspendable cash horde the hedgie already sits on top of. Aren’t taxes the more efficient use of that capital, from a system perspective? Consider: as much as $200 million more from a single person in a single year. As much as $11 billion/year in all, just by more accurately labeling the money extremely wealthy put in their pocket. That’s an enormous amount of money. Just ask Maine. Off Shore Tax LoopholesThe Maine Governor is considering signing a law that will close the “Water’s Edge” loophole, and reduce tax haven abuse by multinationals. For its efforts, Maine will get about $10 million/year. As the law’s sponsor explained, that’s real money in Maine, enough to justify changing their law. Speaking of states, they are hurt by the carried interest game too. New York taxes income. But NY doesn’t tax carried interest. By allowing some wealthy people to rename their income capital gains, New York waives large amounts of revenue. What could New York afford if it didn’t? Congressional PrioritiesSpeaking of loopholes and corruption, consider how the Do-Nothing Congress is moving toward passing–yet again–several heavily lobbying multinationals’ favorite loopholes, including GE‘s and Apple‘s. But it can’t manage to pass extend unemployment insurance benefits or fund our infrastructure, and it cut food stamps. Those priorities are criminal, morally speaking. Congress can prioritize the agenda of GE’s 98 lobbyists (including 28 “revolvers"—former members of Congress, former Congressional staffers, or former Executive Branch officials) even though it costs $6 billion in waived revenue for the two year “extension.” Like solving the carried interest problem, solving the GE and Apple loophole is simply a matter of making income reported for tax purposes more accurately reflect the underlying economic reality. For the loopholes, it is about correctly identifying the country in which the income was earned; where the value generating happened. $52 Billion in 2014 Alone from Making The Tax Code More Accurate.Imagine spending $6 billion on our crumbling infrastructure instead of giving it to GE and other profitable multinationals. Imagine if we failed to re-enact misguided (at best) tax provisions like “bonus depreciation” and the badly designed “research and experiment” tax credit. Those two would get us $90 billion over the two years Congress is considering expanding it for, according to CBO data. Depreciation is a substantive concept about how to allocate the cost of something over its useful life. “Bonus depreciation” is a totally artificial version, where the relevant time frame has nothing to do with the useful life of the purchase. The research and experiment tax credit’s stated purpose is to spur investment into important discoveries. Again, without questioning the policy judgment, it’s easy to see the tax credit, as designed, has unintended consequences. Rebecca Wilkins, Senior Counsel for Federal Tax Policy, Citizens for Tax Justice explained to me (a couple weeks ago, when I reporting the tax stories for Benzinga) that "The way the rules are written, taxpayers can get a dollar for dollar credit for all kinds of stuff that most of us wouldn't consider valuable research. One sign of how badly it is designed," Wilkins continued, "is that you can claim it years after doing the 'research' by filing an amended return. That means the credit was not an incentive to do that 'research'." In just 2014, failing to re-enact just bonus depreciation and the research & experiment credit would net $35 billion, nearly double what it would take to extend unemployment benefits. In fact, it’s enough to both fund the unemployment extension and restore the $8.6 billion food stamp cut. And there’d still be more than $6 billion for infrastructure. Add $6 billion to the $6 billion from GE and Apple loopholes; throw in the $11 billion from no-longer carried interest, and we can pay for unemployment and food stamps and plow $23 billion into our infrastructure each year. Total transportation and infrastructure spending in the 2009 stimulus was only $98 billion. In 5 years making our tax code more accurate in those ways would pay for more infrastructure than the stimulus bill did, and it could do it for as many years as needed. What’s important to focus on is that these changes are about accuracy; they’re not really about basic policy. Note too, a thorough review of the tax code would surely turn up more examples where policy choices were made and then undermined by adding statutory language allowing the 0.1% to legally though dishonestly subvert the policy choice. So simply making the code honest would probably net far more. Congressional CorruptionA Congress that can enact the “active financing” GE loophole, the “CFC look through” Apple loophole (and continue preserving the related “check the box” loophole”), bonus depreciation, the research and experiment tax credit (as currently designed) and preserve carried interest, but fail to provide even a tiny modicum of income and food security to ordinary Americans is corrupt. I don’t mean corrupt only in the Chief Justice John Roberts sense of directly proveable quid-pro-quo. (Though donors threatening Republicans because of a House member’s tax reform proposal and conventional wisdom that the reform package is DOA sure looks like cause and effect.) By corruption I mean Congress’s strong legislative bias in favor of the interests of 0.1% of Americans at the expense of the 99.9%. As a matter of majoritarian public policy, these tax and budget decisions are indefensible. Instead of representing us, ‘our’ Congress is representing the 0.1%. I’m not claiming that Congress is corrupt whenever majoritarian demands are trumped by minorities’ interests. Often in policy conflicts minorities should win, because the majority is striving to deprive the minority of Due Process, Equal Protection, or other constitutional guarantees. Upholding the minority interest in such situations is upholding our constitution. But Congress should be defined as corrupt whenever it legislates public policy choices that increase the economic insecurity and stress of the 99.9% while furthering the economic interests of the handful of people who are already so wealthy three generations of their families will be unable to liquidate their entire fortunes. In a democratic country, the only explanation for such policy choices is that a sufficient number of Congress members personally benefit enough by legislating that way that they do it. And I call that corruption. |
| Gold Carves Lower High in April- Bearish Below $1327 Posted: 19 Apr 2014 10:50 PM PDT dailyfx |
| Why China is a positive and not a negative for the gold price going forward Posted: 19 Apr 2014 10:05 PM PDT Last week a report from the World Gold Council suggested that around 1,000 tonnes of gold is being used as collateral in Chinese commodity financing deals that would be unwound if the shadow banking complex was to collapse. Not surprisingly news of such a supply overhang depressed the gold price. Since then analysts have pointed out that this is an assumption and based on little more than an estimate of gold imports. Moreover, last year gold experienced significant volatility and high local premiums in China that would not have made it ideal for financing. Copper is the usual commodity of choice for such deals. You don’t use assets carrying large premiums either. Facts, facts So it looks like a rather poor piece of work that has unnecessarily damaged the gold price based on supposition rather than facts. Indeed, ArabianMoney has always argued that China is a valuable support for the gold price and also a reason why it will eventually head much higher. Certainly the selling of 880 tonnes of gold last year by ETFs would have depressed the price far further if it had not been for the uptake in China where the retail market for gold is particularly hot at the moment. Local retail investors want a little gold in their portfolios because perhaps deep down they know that good times cannot last forever. China has seen many episodes of paper money becoming worthless in its long history. We have also flagged up the fact that this gold is on a one-way trip to China. It is not coming back. The Chinese have not sent a bar back in the other direction for years. Gold exports are illegal. Thus the supply shortage in the West will be evident when the ETFs want to stock up on gold again as would happen with the slightest whiff of inflation or problems in the bond markets. That’s positive for prices, not negative. If money printing is going to get out of control then China and Japan are the two most likely culprits. Japan is already printing three times more per capita than QE3 at its height. Gold is a hedge against currency devaluation. It’s not something you can print. Shadow banking crisis Sure at the margins there would be gold sales if the Chinese shadow banking system imploded. Then again a far more probable scenario is a series of controlled detonations that will scare more local investors into buying something with a value that does not depend on any third party bank or financial institution. From the Western side there is the view that recent money printing will finally result in inflation as economic growth gathers pace. That’s gold positive too. Then again if China and Japan get into trouble it is hard to believe over-inflated Western asset prices would hold up under the deflationary tsunami. US economic data splutters forward even now. Precious metals are a hedge against falling stock and real estate markets, or at least fall by less and rebound more quickly. Gold remains an attractive buy at current price levels. |
| Fed’s Stock Market Levitation Running Out of Steam! Posted: 19 Apr 2014 09:01 PM PDT
 The lofty stock markets are starting to wobble, with selloffs' frequency and sharpness increasing. The dominant reason the Fed's stock levitation is running out of steam is severe overvaluation. Stocks are just far too expensive today compared to historic precedent, a dangerous state seen when bull markets are topping. Rampant overvaluation is a glaring warning [...] The post Fed’s Stock Market Levitation Running Out of Steam! appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Nickel Aluminium prices look toppy Gold Silver boost short lived: Barclays Posted: 19 Apr 2014 07:40 PM PDT commodityonline |
| LBMA defense of London gold fixing distracts from central bank involvement Posted: 19 Apr 2014 07:32 PM PDT GATA |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Gold World News Flash 2 To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment