| |
 | Chris Powell - GATA |
| U.S. bank derivatives books larger since rescue of Bear Stearns |
| At the end of January 2008, in what would turn out to be its final annual report, Bear Stearns went into some detail about its big book of derivatives. The book had a notional value of $13.4 trillion at the end of November, Bear said, up more than 50 percent from a year earlier. A two-notch downgrade in the firm's credit ratings, it added, would require it to come up with an extra $353m in collateral.
This huge cluster of financial instruments -- swaps, futures, forwards, and options -- may not Sunday, March 18, 2018 |
|
 | Adrian Ash - Bullion Vault |
| 5 Facts About Silver Investing in 2018 |
| What do the Comex silver bears know...?
YOU MIGHT think hedge fund traders have called it right so far in 2018 on silver investing,
writes Adrian Ash at BullionVault.
As a group, the 'Managed Money' category of traders betting on Comex silver contracts stayed bearish overall in mid-to-late February, having turned against the metal in December for the first time since JulWednesday, February 28, 2018 |
|
| Bullion Vault |
| Gold Prices Rally from Hard ... |
| GOLD PRICES regained half of last week's losses on Monday morning in London as the US Dollar inched down ahead of US inflation data and the new Fed chief Jerome Powell's first congressional testimony,
writes Steffen Grosshauser at BullionVault.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell will speak about US monetary policy before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday and the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.
Monday, February 26, 2018 |
|
 | Mark O'Byrne - gold.ie |
| Crypto Currency Backlash Sees Flight From Cryptos and Bitcoin |
| – Bitcoin falls from $20,000 to below $6,000 and bounces back to $8000– Top 50 crypto currencies lost over 50% of value in 24 hours– Over $60 billion wiped off entire crypto currency market in 24 hours– Markets concerned about increased regulation, manipulation & country-wide bans– ‘Growing global unease about risks virtual currencies pose to investors and financial system’ – SEC– Gold acting as store of value from “correcting” stock markets & crashing cryptos
– Gold is essentially flat in recenWednesday, February 7, 2018 |
|
| Chris Powell - GATA |
| Bitcoin ban expands across credit cards as big U.S. banks recoil |
| A growing number of big U.S. credit-card issuers are deciding they don’t want to finance a falling knife.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc. said they're halting purchases of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on their credit cards. JPMorgan, enacting the ban today, doesn't want the credit risk associated with the transactions, company spokeswoman Mary Jane Rogers said.
Bank of America started declining credit card transactions with known crypto exchanges on Friday. Tuesday, February 6, 2018 |
|
 | Jim Willie CB - Hat Trick Letter |
Silver as a Strategic Metal and Why Prices Will Soar  |
| The arguments in favor of silver as an investment asset are growing rapidly. In the opinion of the Jackass, silver is the most under-valued hard asset in existence, with the highest potential for price appreciation on the globe. To begin with, central banks own no silver, but do own huge tracts of gold. Industry has huge demand for silver, but a trifling amount for gold demand. The investment demand is another key factor in favor of silver, but also for gold. Ever since the tech telecom bust in Sunday, January 21, 2018 |
|
 | Michael Ballanger |
| Never Underestimate the Replacement Power of Equities Within a (HYPER) Inflationary Spiral |
| Before I launch into one of my classic, bitter, vitriolic diatribes against all forms of modern-day interventionalist-type, fraudulent excuses for what use to be "free markets," have a gander at the chart below. Pay particular attention to the smiles on all of those beaming faces. . .
Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, sidekick Hank Paulson, "Rescue Queen" Janet Yellen, and finally Donald "the Swamp Filler" Trump have all conspired and colluded to ensure that the world has perennially rising stockFriday, January 19, 2018 |
|
 | Wolf Richter |
| Margin Debt, Backed by Enron-Déjà-Vu Steinhoff Shares, Hits BofA, Citi, HSBC, Goldman, BNP |
| “Shadow margin” is a booming business for brokers. Now they’re licking their wounds.
When the bankers of Christo Wiese, the former chairman and largest shareholder of Steinhoff International Holdings – a global retail empire that includes the Mattress Firm and Sleepy’s in the US – went to work on December 6 in the epic nothing-can-go-wrong calm of the rising stock markets, they suddenly discovered that much of their collateral for a €1.6-billion margin loan they’d made to Wiese had just evaporatWednesday, December 20, 2017 |
|
 | Jan Skoyles - GoldCore |
| Geopolitical Risk Highest “In Four Decades” – Gold Demand in Germany and Globally to Remain Robust |
| – Geopolitical risk highest “in four decades” should push gold higher – Citi
– Elections, political and macroeconomic crises and war lead to gold investment
– Political uncertainty in Germany means “gold likely to remain in good demand as a safe haven” say Commerzbank
– “There has rarely been such political uncertainty in Germany at any time in the country’s post-war history” – Commerzbank
– Reduce counter party risk: own safe haven allocated and segregated gold
Editor: Mark O’Byrne
The geopolWednesday, November 22, 2017 |
|
| Bullion Vault |
| Platinum Betting Turns Positive as Gold Bullion Finds Another 'Event-Driven Bid' |
| GOLD BULLION slipped together with silver and platinum ahead of the US open on Monday, down 0.5% from last week's 1-month high just below $1300 per ounce as world stock markets fell following the weekend's collapse of coalition government talks in Germany.
With pundits calling it Germany's
"worst political crisis in decades", current Chancellor Angela Merkel met this morning with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier after the Free DemoMonday, November 20, 2017 |
|
| Bullion Vault |
| Gold Prices Rally Near 3-Month Lows Amid Saudi Purge and Yemen Attack |
| GOLD PRICES rose in all major currencies outside a rallying British Pound on Monday, gaining as crude oil hit 2-year highs amid political turmoil and violence in the Middle East.
Gold prices rallied back to $1272 per ounce as oil futures rose to their highest Dollar price since mid-2015, breaching $62 per barrel of Brent crude after the
weekend's "purge" and detention by new crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman of numerous Saudi princesMonday, November 6, 2017 |
|
| Jan Skoyles - GoldCore |
| Gold Up 74 Since Last Market Peak 10 Years Ago |
| – 10 year anniversary of pre-Global Financial Crisis market peak in S&P 500 on October 9th
– Gold up 74% since the last market peak a decade ago; 11% pa in USD, 9.4% pa in EUR and 12.4% pa in GBP
– Precious metal has climbed $736/oz on Oct 9th 2007 to $1278.75 ten-years later
– S&P 500’s 102% climb is thanks to asset-pumping policies by central banks, rather than value
– Gold’s performance is slowly forcing mainstream to re-consider gold
– “Notion of gold as a hedge against serious risk aversionSaturday, October 21, 2017 |
|
| Michael Ballanger |
| The Monotonous Madness of Managed Markets |
| So there you have it. A clear breakout to all-time highs confirmed by every measure everywhere with momentum charging ahead and high-fives and champagne corks flying about with reckless abandon and serial glee. To quote Chuck Prince, who left Citigroup in 2007 with an exit bonus of around $12.5 million, $68 million in stock and options, $1.7 million pension, an office, a car and a driver for five years during which time Citigroup shed $64 BILLION in valuation, "As long as the music is playing, yThursday, October 5, 2017 |
|
| Bullion Vault |
| N.Korea Nuclear Test Sees Gold Price Hit 11-Month High vs. Weak Dollar, GLD + Comex Bets Jump |
| GOLD PRICES rose near 1-year highs against the Dollar and British Pound on Monday morning in London after jumping at the start of Asian trade amid reports that North Korea will follow its series of nuclear weapon tests with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch,
writes Steffen Grosshauser at BullionVault.
While world stock markets fell 0.5%,
the spot gold price jumped by 1% to $1338 per ounce – the highestMonday, September 4, 2017 |
|
| Bullion Vault |
| Gold Price makes Small Recovery in Wake of Political/Geopolitical Uncertainty, while the Market Closely Watches Jackson Hole |
| GOLD PRICES edged 0.3 percent higher on Monday lunch time, after falling $15 from $1300 per ounce last Friday, as news broke that President Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon had left his position at the White House. $1300 per ounce was the highest gold price since the U.S. presidential election.
This latest upheaval in the Trump administration followed the resignation of several top CEOs from President Trump's Manufacturing Council, following his weak response to the CharlottesviMonday, August 21, 2017 |
|
 | Michael Pento - Delta Global Advisors |
| 5 Reasons to Fear the Fall |
| This powerful and protracted bull market has made Cassandras look foolish for a long time. Those who went on record predicting that massive central bank manipulation of markets would not engender viable economic growth have been proven correct. However, these same individuals failed to fully anticipate the willingness of momentum-trading algorithms to take asset prices very far above the underlying level of economic growth.
Nevertheless, there are five reasons to believe that this fall will finaMonday, August 7, 2017 |
|
| Graham Summer - Gains Pains & Capital |
| Machine Mania in the Marketplace: How Computers Came to Own the World |
| The following article by David Haggith is from The Great Recession Blog:
With 60% of stocks now being traded by bots that fake each other out in order to create buying opportunities, stock exchanges have lost their connection to the reason markets are created in the first place. The exchanges no longer exist as places for people to buy and sell ownership in a corporation. They exist simply as the neural junctions of a conglomerated machine that plays tricks on itself, and your sole goal is no Wednesday, August 2, 2017 |
|
 | Jason Hamlin - Gold Stock Bull |
| Upcoming Bitcoin SegWit Deadline, Ethereum Falls, and Tierion ICO |
| What Is SegWit2x and How will it Change Bitcoin?
The upcoming SegWit activation deadline on August 1st is expected to cause more volatility in the price price action for Bitcoin. However, it remains to be seen in which direction it will trend. But what exactly is SegWit and what does it mean for you?
The start of this scaling debate started years ago. In order to protect from cyber attacks, Bitcoin was designed to cap the amount of information on its network. That puts a ceiling on how many tranSaturday, July 15, 2017 |
|
| Bullion Vault |
| Gold Bullion 'Targets $80 Drop' as GLD Shrinks, SLV Grows on Silver's 16-Month Price Lows |
| GOLD BULLION on Tuesday halved last night's $10 per ounce recovery from 4-month lows against a rallying US Dollar, trading at $1210 as major government bond prices fell again, pushing up longer-term interest rates.
Commodities reversed yesterday's gains as European stock markets slipped, but Asian equities ended Tuesday higher after provisional data said new machine-tool orders in Japan jumped 31% in June from the same month last year.
Thursday, July 13, 2017 |
|
| Sprott Money |
| The End of Markets, Part III - Jeff Nielson |
| We no longer have markets, not in the sense of international
exchanges for human commerce. What we have, instead, is a 24/7 computerized
price-rigging operation – which has hijacked all of our market infrastructure.
The entity responsible for this enormous systemic crime is
very familiar to regular readers:
the
One Bank
. Part II of this series ended with a pledge to provide readers
with evidence. Not evidence of (mere) manipulation. Such evidence exists in
abundance, and a considerable amounWednesday, July 5, 2017 |
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