Currency

Bitcoin: The Other Crash?

UnknownPeople are grappling with market turmoil after Friday’s equity slide, but there was a good deal of action in another financial instrument: Bitcoin.

Bitcoin moved down some 10 percent on Friday after one of its significant developers, Mike Hearn, claimed in a startling blogpost that the cryptocurrency was now a failure.

Hearn used a publishing platform, Medium, to make his announcement, writing, “Despite knowing that bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly.”

Hearn’s views are reportedly aligned with Gavin Andresen, another famous developer. The controversy pits Hearn and Andresen against other developers over the issue of whether – and how – processing speed for bitcoin “blocks” should be expanded.

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Jan 19, 2016

  1. As the third trading week of 2016 gets underway, gold continues to trade with great stability, regardless of whether global economic news appears to be good or bad.

  2. Please click here now. Double-click to enlarge this hourly bars gold chart.

  3. When gold was languishing in the $1060 area, I suggested it would rise to about $1110, and then pull back to the neckline of a double-headed inverse head and shoulders bottom. That’s exactly what happened.

  4. From a purely technical gold chart perspective, gold “should” now rally back to the $1110 area, but please click here now. Double-click to enlarge. That’s the US dollar versus yen daily bars chart.

  5. Gold has a very strong tendency to trade against the dollar like the yen trades against it. In the big picture, the good news is that the dollar is showcasing a huge head and shoulders top pattern against the yen, and a major uptrend line has been decisively penetrated to the downside.

  6. In the short term, unfortunately, the dollar is likely to rally back to the broken trend line, and that could put some temporary pressure on the price of gold. Gold is likely to ease to $1033 – $1045, if the dollar rallies against the yen.

  7. From there, the largest gold rally seen in many years is likely to occur, as the dollar gets crushed by safe-haven buying of the yen.

  8. Western gold community investors should be aggressive gold buyers, regardless of any pain they feel, if this gold price pull back occurs.

  9. Please click here now. Double-click to enlarge this Dow daily bars chart. China just announced Q4 growth of about 6.8%, and global stock markets are rallying on the news.

  10. In America, GDP growth for Q4 of 2015 may come in well under 1%, with the Atlanta Fed already estimating it will be about 0.6%, a truly horrific number.

  11. Regardless, the US stock market does often follow the Chinese stock market, and a short term US stock market rally can couple with a modest dollar-yen rally, to put some additional short term pressure on gold.

  12. Please click here now. Double-click to enlarge. This FXI-NYSE daily chart of the Chinese stock market is flashing what I would call a buy-side volume alert.

  13. All US stock market crashes were significant buying opportunities, when America was the world’s leading economic empire. Now, all Chinese stock market meltdowns are equally important buying opportunities, as China steadily moves to take the global economic “leadership baton”.

  14. As the world’s “ultimate asset”, I expect gold to generally perform well, regardless of whether China’s economy surges, crashes, or drifts sideways.

  15. Please click here now. Double-click to enlarge this daily bars oil chart. The end of oil-related sanctions against Iran has opened the door to a “buy the news” oil market rally.

  16. Unfortunately for global stock markets and the dollar versus the yen, Iranian supply is likely to add to the global oil supply glut, taking oil and global stock markets into a fresh decline. That will create another surge of yen safe haven buying, and fuel a significant rally in the price of gold.

  17. The year of 2016 is likely to be better for bullion than for gold stocks, largely because of the yen acting as a safe haven against the dollar, but gold stocks should be accumulated now, in preparation for the rise of American stagflation in 2017.

  18. As oil recovers later this year, I expect Janet Yellen to keep pressure on global stock markets with more rate hikes. A lot of analysts think she is focused on the US stock market, but I would argue that was more the focus of Ben Bernanke.

  19. I’ve argued that Janet Yellen is a much bigger friend of Main Street than Wall Street, and her bold taper of QE to zero, which I predicted, bears that out. She also appears to have serious concerns, and rightfully so, about the “debtaholic” mentality of the US government.

  20. I’ve stated that “Rate Hikes Rock”, because they empower Main Street and put pressure on the US government to change its ways, or face gold revaluation.

  21. Also, savers finally have an incentive, one that will grow, to put money in the bank, where it can be loaned out. That puts upwards pressure on money supply velocity, increasing inflation. Janet Yellen has helped stabilize the price of gold, with her taper of QE, and with just one rate hike.

  22. More rate hikes are coming, many more, and I don’t think Janet Yellen cares how loudly the US government and Wall Street whine about it.

  23. Please click here now. Double-click to enlarge this daily bars GDX chart.As Janet empowers Main Street and produces stagflation, gold stocks will become the “go-to” asset for institutional money managers.

  24. Most gold stock analysts are trying vainly to predict either a “final low” for gold stocks, a fresh decline, or some other kind of price event. I’m not sure that such an endeavor builds any wealth. It’s more important that gold stock enthusiasts simply buy systematically into the current “seeds of stagflation” theme, so they benefit when the seeds become trees and flowers!

Thanks!
Cheers
st

 

SP500: Dead Cat Bounce

Monthly time frame:

 

  • The 10 mma has a negative slope
  • In addition we know have a lower high and a lower low

 

We should not rule out that SP 500 has begun a corrective phase that could open the door to a 0.382 retracement of the advance from the 2009 low which would coincide with a test of the Double Top break out (2000 and 2007 highs), I am talking about the range 1574-1553.

SPX-M0-1024x699

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Why This Slump Has Legs

We’ve only really been in two weeks of trading in the new year, things are looking pretty bad to say the least, so predictably the press are asking -and often answering- questions about when the slump will be over. Rebound, recovery, the usual terminology. When will we get back to growth?

For me personally, but that’s just me, that last question sounds a bit more stupid every single time I hear and read it. Just a bit, but there’s been a lot of those bits, more than I care to remember. Luckily, the answer is easy. The slump will not be over for a very long time, there will be no rebound or recovery, and please stop talking about a return to growth unless you can explain what you want to grow into.….continue reading HERE

MarginalDebt

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Sage investment advice from Mike Tyson

tyson-money[Editor’s note: This letter was penned by Tim Price, London-based wealth manager and editor of Price Value International.]

In a crisis, it helps to have good counsel. Consider the following sage advice from investment strategist Mike Tyson:

“Everyone has a plan ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”

Or as German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke the Elder put it, somewhat more formally:

“No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”

The enemy has been quick to show himself this year, in the form of a bear market, at least for stocks.

This bear has so far been quick, and indiscriminate: the US; Europe; China; stock markets have fallen sharply, internationally.

Investors, being human, have scrambled in search of an explanatory narrative.

Some have blamed the Fed’s baby steps towards raising interest rates. Some blame the collapse in the oil price.

Last week’s movie night showed David Cronenberg’s 2012 thriller ‘Cosmopolis’, which has Robert Pattinson playing a 28-year-old hedge fund billionaire losing his entire fortune in a single day due to the unexpected rise of the Chinese renminbi.

Other than getting the direction of the renminbi wrong, the movie could have been shot yesterday.

But it has certainly been a good week for bears.

Last week RBS told us to “Sell everything except high quality bonds”. This is somewhat problematic since there aren’t actually any high quality bonds out there.

Tuesday brought us SocGen’s Global Strategy Conference, where guest speaker Russell Napier pointed out that growth in emerging market foreign exchange reserves from 2008 to 2014 amounted to the most rapid increase in emerging market money supply in history.

As this process goes into reverse, emerging market growth will clearly suffer.

And since many emerging market countries have over-borrowed in foreign currencies, the fighting in the global currency wars is set to get more intense this year.

As Napier warns, 2016 has also ushered in new rules requiring bond and deposit holders to be bailed in when banks blow up.

The EU (and many of its bank depositors) will come to regret not restructuring their banking system during the seven years post-Lehman when they had the opportunity.

The search for an easy narrative to explain the bear market is probably a waste of time. The financial market is a complex adaptive system and investors are prone to irrational behaviour and mood swings.

They are also prone to overpay. The great ‘value’ investor Benjamin Graham reminded us that,

“Operations for profit should be based not on optimism but on arithmetic.”

The optimists have had things their own way in an almost unbroken line since March 2009. January 2016 so far would suggest that the pragmatists are now in charge.

So the pragmatic response to this month’s volatility – if any is indeed required at all – is as follows:

1) Diversify by asset type.

2) Limit or eliminate exposure to emerging market debt. Raise cash rather than cling to a benchmark with no conviction (and no obvious value).

3) Concentrate any debt exposure to bonds issued by creditors, not debtors.

4) Limit equity exposure to high quality and inexpensive markets offering a ‘margin of safety’. (Most of the US market does not qualify in this regard.)

Russell Napier recommends Japanese equities, currency hedged, and so do we. And in a bear market, you don’t want to own expensive growth, you want to own defensive value.

5) Complement traditional investments with alternatives.

We would advocate systematic trend-following funds (which can profit in bear markets just as they did in 2008), and gold – the one form of currency that comes with no counterparty risk because it is the one asset that is no-one’s liability.

6) Limit your exposure to mainstream financial media, and especially to economists employed by commercial banks.

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