From Birch Gold Group
It seems like the market is responding urgently to what the Fed has been saying about rate cuts, as the market has been on a rather unusually long bull run.
Earlier today the DOW was at an all-time high despite losing 136 points on confirmation that some FAANG companies are to be investigated (see chart):
The S&P 500 is also sitting at a record high (see chart):
Continue reading “Recent Bull Market Bypasses Retirees”
“Government has coddled, accepted, and ignored white collar crime for too long. It is time the nation woke up and realized that it’s not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most economic harm, it’s the white collar criminals living in the most expensive homes who have the most impressive resumes who harm us the most. They steal our pensions, bankrupt our companies, and destroy thousands of jobs, ruining countless lives.” – Harry Markopolos, Madoff Whistleblower
The tenth anniversary of the Wall Street created financial catastrophe brought back some bittersweet memories this week. I wrote my first articles during the summer/fall of 2008 for Seeking Alpha. They included: Is The U.S Banking System Safe? (Aug 2008), The Great Consumer Crash of 2009 (Aug 2008), Looming Financial Catastrophe: A Real Inconvenient Truth (Aug 2008), Is Wachovia the Worst Run Bank in America (Sept 2008), The U.S. on the Precipice (Sept 2008), On Board the U.S.S. Titanic (Sept 2008), Our Coming Depression (Oct 2008), among others. I was pumping out 5,000 word articles every 2 or 3 days.
Guest Post by Simon Black
Well, it happened. Yesterday the US stock market broke the all-time record for the longest bull market ever.
This means that the US stock market has been generally rising for nearly a decade straight… or even more specifically, that the market has gone 3,453 days without a 20% correction.
That’s a pretty big milestone. And there’s no end in sight. So it’s possible this market continues marching higher for the foreseeable future.
But if you step back and really look at the big picture, there are a lot of things that might make a rational person scratch his/her head.
Continue reading “Some thoughts on the ‘longest bull market ever’”
Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
In last week’s missive “Bulls Run On Yellen’s Easy Money,” I addressed the breakout and why we increased equity exposure modestly in portfolios.
“However, this changed this past week as Yellen uttered the two magic words: ‘EASY MONEY.’
Okay, it wasn’t exactly two words. It was actually:
‘Because the neutral rate is currently quite low by historical standards, the federal funds rate would not have to rise all that much further to get to a neutral policy stance.’
In other words, by saying that interest rates would not have to rise much further, the markets translated that to ‘lower interest rates for longer,’ confirming the Federal Reserve will remain “highly accommodative” to the markets so, therefore, ‘buy stocks.’
And with that, the robots leaped into action pushing markets OUT of the month-and-a-half long trading range of just 1.5%. This push to new highs, as noted above, also triggered a short-term ‘buy signal,’ at the bottom of the chart, which suggests this rally should continue higher over the next week, or so, heading into the month of August.”
“With the break above 2452 on Friday, assuming it will hold above that level into next week, it will provide an opportunity to increase short-term equity allocations in portfolios. However, be mindful, this is VERY short-term in nature and could be quickly reversed – so manage your risk accordingly.”
As stated, this analysis is VERY short-term in nature. Price trends are currently positive which keeps portfolios long-biased for the time being. However, while our portfolios are “bullishly” positioned for the short-term, we remain much more pessimistic about the longer-term return dynamics.
If you prefer fake news, fake data, and a fake narrative about an improving economy and stock market headed to 30,000, don’t read this fact based, reality check article. The level of stupidity engulfing the country has reached epic proportions, as the mainstream fake news networks flog bullshit Russian conspiracy stories, knowing at least 50% of the non-thinking iGadget distracted public believes anything they hear on the boob tube.
This stupendous degree of utter stupidity goes to a new level of idiocy when it comes to the stock market. The rigged fleecing machine known as Wall Street has gone into hyper-drive since futures dropped by 700 points on the night of Trump’s election. An already extremely overvalued market, as measured by every historically accurate valuation metric, soared by 4,000 points from that futures low – over 20% – to an all-time high. Despite dozens of warning signs and the experience of two 40% to 50% crashes in the last fifteen years, lemming like investors are confident the future is so bright they gotta wear shades.
The current bull market is the 2nd longest in history at 8 years. In March of 2009, the S&P 500 bottomed at a fitting level for Wall Street of 666. In a shocking coincidence, it bottomed on the same day Bernanke & Geithner forced the FASB to rollover like mangy dogs and stop enforcing mark to market accounting. Amazingly, when Wall Street banks, along with Fannie and Freddie, could value their toxic assets at whatever they chose, profits surged. The market is now 240% higher.
Half the year is over and all you will hear on CNBC and the rest of the captured corporate media is about the ongoing bull market in stocks. You won’t hear about the real bull market. Stocks haven’t gone anywhere in the last 20 months. Their QE created bull market ended in October 2014 when the liquidity spigot was shut off.
Even in this rigged market, with the Fed directly buying through their intermediaries, corporations buying back hundreds of billions of their own stock, and HFT machines programmed to buy by the Wall Street cabal, stocks have barely made any gains in the first six months.
The real bull market, which shall not be mentioned, is revealing the failure of central bankers around the world to debase their way to prosperity. If every country in the world attempts to debase their currency at the same time, there can be only one winner – precious metals. Look who’s winning YTD:
All shall be revealed in the fullness of time. Gold and silver are revealing the failure of the Fed and their establishment puppeteers in their quest to sustain an unsustainable economic system.
You won’t hear these facts on CNBC. They wouldn’t dare discuss anything in inflation adjusted terms. The Dow is up a measly 7.3% over the last 16 years on an inflation adjusted basis. That’s the good news. In reality, we all know the CPI is understated by at least 3% to 5%. So, in reality, the Dow is significantly negative over the last 16 years. Using a true level of inflation would show the Dow not much higher than it was in 1966 at the onset of the welfare/warfare state and before the unlinking of our fiat currency from gold.
If you were a connected insider or friend of the Fed (aka Wall Street bankers) you’ve done quite well since March 2009. But, it seems that once the QE spigot was turned off in October 2014, the Dow has gone nowhere fast. This faux bull market is dying of old age and lack of Fed injected fiat. It’s a long way down to long term support.
The Dow is currently trading 4% below its May 19th all-time record high. For some perspective, today’s chart illustrates the inflation-adjusted Dow since 1900 — there are several points of interest. Take for example an unlucky buy-and-hold investor that invested in the Dow right at the dot-com peak of December 1999. A decade and a half later, the inflation-adjusted Dow is up a mere 7.3%. That is not altogether an impressive performance considering that over 16 years have passed. On the other hand, take the investor who bought right at the end of the financial crisis. The inflation-adjusted Dow is up a significant 119% from its financial crisis lows — not bad for a for a seven year investment. More recently, the inflation-adjusted Dow has broken below support of a trend that has existed since the end of the financial crisis induced bear market.
You listen to the spokes bimbos on Bloomberg, the bubble headed bimbos on Fox, and the brain dead bimbos on CNBC, along with the various talking heads, pundits, shills and shysters every day on the corporate propaganda media. They regurgitate the false economic data distributed by the Orwellian government agencies to convince the the ignorant masses the economy is in recovery mode, jobs are plentiful, housing is booming, and the .1% aren’t really fleecing the muppets. They also blather about an ongoing bull market in stocks despite the FACT the Dow Jones is now lower than it was on December 27, 2013. Do bull markets go 20 months without advancing? Do you think Jim Cramer will mention this FACT today on CNBC?
Yearning for sunnier skies for your gold investments? How’s this sound…
That’s not pie in the sky wishful thinking—it accurately describes the next stage of the gold market, something that will soon visit your portfolio.
With the price of gold currently stuck in place, like a stain on the front of your best shirt, and the stocks only teasing us like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, how can I be so sure?
Because that’s exactly what happened after every other bear market. For example…
As I pointed out last month, markets cycle. The current range-bound price for precious metals won’t last forever, for the simple reason that they never have, especially in the resource market.
If you set your sights on the big picture, you’ll see that in spite of today’s negative emotions, gold’s future prospects will render them a distant memory.
Consider some of the likely changes on the horizon and how they will transform the gold market from flat and listless to exciting and profitable…
Continue reading “History Shows A Gold Bull Market Is Fast Approaching”
