Baltic Dry Index. 540 -13 Brent Crude 57.05
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Money,
again, has often been a cause of the delusion of the multitudes. Sober nations
have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence
upon the turn of a piece of paper.
Charles
Mackay. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds
More red flags today, this time from America not
China, and Friday the thirteenth too. Plus the Baltic Dry (shipping) Index
makes a new all time record low. What could possibly go wrong in the Great
Disconnect between central bank goosed stock prices and the reality of the real
world?
Retail sales slump again, as Americans pocket savings at pump
Published: Feb 12, 2015 8:55 a.m. ET
Sales drop 0.8% in first month of 2015 in
disappointing report
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Retail
sales fell in January for the second month in a row as consumers appeared to
pocket most of the savings from sharply lower gasoline prices.
Retail sales declined by a
seasonally adjusted 0.8% last month after a 0.9% drop in December, the
government said Thursday. The slow start to sales this year suggests the U.S.
economy is likely to grow more slowly in the first quarter after a 2.6% gain in
the final three months of 2014.
More
U.S. stocks close at highest level in 2015
Published: Feb 12, 2015 4:38 p.m. ET
Expedia, Orbitz Worldwide shares surge on merger news
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stocks rallied on Thursday, sending the
S&P 500 to its highest close this year and within shouting distance of the
record close reached on Dec 29.Optimism stemmed from news of a cease-fire agreement between Russia and Ukraine, a pickup in oil prices and merger news, with gains building throughout the session.
The S&P 500 SPX, +0.96% added 19.95 points, or 1%, to 2,088.48, with eight of its 10 sectors finishing higher. Among them, materials, technology and energy sectors stocks led the gains, while utilities and telecoms were the only laggards.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.62% jumped 110.24 points, or 0.6%, to 17,972.38, with 24 of its 30 components gaining. Cisco Systems, Inc. was the top gainer, jumping 8.2%, while American Express Company led laggards, falling more than 6%.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP, +1.18% rose to its highest level since 2000, aided a third straight day by a climb in the heaviest-weighted component in the index Apple Inc., which was up 1.2% on the day.Apple has gained 6.3% over the past four days.
More
One big fear with a strong dollar: a stock market bubble
Published: Feb 12, 2015 2:56 p.m. ET
Does a strong dollar make a good bubble?
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The concerns that have kept U.S. stocks in check since the start of the year haven't dissipated. But that hasn’t stopped the S&P 500 from marching to within shouting distance of an all-time high.The S&P 500 SPX, +0.96% rose 0.8% to 2,085.23 on Thursday on news of a cease-fire agreement between Ukraine and Russia, and is third a percentage point away from a record close reached Dec. 29, 2014.
It isn’t the fundamentals that brought the markets to these lofty levels, as fourth-quarter earnings have been less than stellar. Moreover, 2015 earnings estimates have been dialed down.
But some experts believe that the climb
higher, driven by the strengthening dollar, can create a bubble in U.S. stocks.
The dollar DXY,
-0.25% rose nearly
13% in 2014, and is up 4%, so far this year.
more
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-big-fear-with-a-strong-dollar-a-stock-market-bubble-2015-02-12?dist=lbeforebell
In oil news, ignore the hype says Moody’s. In the game of falling crude oil prices, it’s all snakes and ladders, swings and roundabouts.Low oil prices will do little to stimulate global growth, Moody's says
Ratings agency says benefits of reduced energy costs will be offset by weakness in the eurozone and elsewhere
Wednesday 11 February 2015 12.20 GMT
Lower oil prices will do little to spur global growth in the next two years
as the world economy is buffeted by events in the eurozone, China and Russia, a
credit-rating agency has warned.The claim came as oil prices continued to fall on Wednesday to below $55 after a brief but significant rally last week and as a top industry analyst predicted the value of crude would fall a lot more before it any sustained improvement.
Analysts at Moody’s said the big fall in the price of oil since the summer should, in theory, boost economic output by cutting costs for businesses and consumers. But in its global macro outlook report, Moody’s left its estimates for growth among G20 countries at less than 3% – broadly unchanged from last year’s rate and Moody’s earlier 2015 forecast in November.
Marie Diron, who wrote the report, said: “A range of factors will offset the windfall income gains from cheaper energy. In the euro area, the fall in oil prices takes place in an unfavourable economic climate, with high unemployment, low or negative inflation and resurgent political uncertainty in some countries.”
Gains in real household incomes in the eurozone will be suppressed by joblessness and prices barely rising or falling. People worried about losing their job are likely to save and not spend any extra money, Diron said.
More
"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money."
Daniel Webster
At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 67.86
Moz, Eligible 107.70 Moz, Total 175.56 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
In the botched US Ukraine coup that was supposed to
end Russia forever, and slice and dice up EurAsia’s natural resources for the
west, Bloomberg puts forward the latest spin on why it all went wrong. From
Vicky Nuland’s “fuck the EU,” and we want “Yats,” it’s now all the fault of
those oily, backboneless continentals, who lack the will for a third European
war in a century.
Below, Bloomie spins off on the false premise that
Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, conveniently omitting that it was Georgian
troops that attacked Russian peace keeping troops in South Ossetia at the
urging of “the decider” in Washington, in an earlier attempt to slice and dice
up Russia. President Putin, it seems, just won’t play his bit part in
Washington’s War Party EurAsian script. If the War Party can’t trounce a mere
143 million poor Russians, what chance have they against the “big one,” taking
on 1.4 billion Chinese?
Wait a minute, isn’t the War Party firing up the
Japs? Bloomie omits any reference to the Cairo Conference of 1943, attended by Chinese
ally Chiang Kia-shek, to strip Japan of all conquests from 1914, reaffirmed again
at Potsdam in 1945, referring instead to “a territorial dispute over islands in the East
China Sea.”
“The Germans outside looked from America to
Russia, and from Russia to America, and from America to Russia again; but
already it was impossible to say which was which.”
With apologies to George Orwell and
Animal Farm.
Putin's High Tolerance for Pain and Europe's Reluctance to Inflict It
2:00 AM WET February
13, 201
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose country was invaded by
Russia in 2008, revealed to an audience of Ukrainians what Vladimir Putin
thought of their nation.“I had 36 meetings with Putin,” Saakashvili said in a visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv in August, five months after the annexation of Crimea. “At almost each one he repeated that Ukraine is not a real state but Russian territory. He will go as far as he is allowed.”
As a cease-fire emerges in Ukraine that gives Putin a lot of what he wants, the comments are a reminder of how the country remains trapped between the weight of Russian history and the force of European economics. In this squeeze, Putin’s narrative backed by Cold War memories is coupled with leaders unwilling to blow up ties with a major trading partner and energy supplier.
“Some EU member states just don’t care that much about Ukraine,” Paul Ivan, a former Romanian diplomat now with the European Policy Centre in Brussels, said this week. “There are countries with historical ties and good relations with Russia, and for some others they think they’re far away from Ukraine and they’re willing to compromise that country’s territorial integrity for their own economic interests.”
Putin says he is protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine, which Russia annexed in the mid-17th century and reluctantly relinquished as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He has overwhelming support at home, even as the economy starts to shrink on the back of plunging oil prices and an almost 50 percent tumble in the value of the ruble since August.
For the European Union, penalties like trade sanctions and visa restrictions are unlikely to be tough enough to bring Russia to heel, especially on a continent flirting with its own recession and coping with the legacy of a debt crisis.
“Putin has much more at stake,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center. “Putin’s will and Russia’s willingness to suffer for a cause is his asset.”
More
Japan Gets Ready to Fight
Abe wants to unshackle Japan from
its postwar pacifism
10:12 PM WET February 12, 2015
Japan’s shock, grief, and anger
over the recent beheadings of two of its citizens by Islamic State has drawn
into sharp focus the country’s ambivalence about the use of its military to
protect its citizens and its interests. For decades, Japan was bound by its
1947 constitution to mobilize troops solely for self-defense. The country
didn’t have the legal right to send armed troops abroad to protect its own people
or back up allies who come under attack.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is
determined to change this Cold War arrangement, which was imposed by the U.S.
during its postwar occupation of Japan. Today the country faces a far more
complex set of threats than the Soviet invasion that it feared 70 years ago.
Islamic State has pledged more attacks to punish Japan’s decision to extend
$200 million in humanitarian aid to countries battling the extremists who
hold sway over large sections of Syria and Iraq.
Japan has also verbally clashed
with China in a territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea. And on
Feb. 7, North Korea announced it had tested an “ultraprecision” antiship
rocket near Japan’s maritime border. “The world is now a pretty complicated place,
and denying yourself a reasonable defense and cooperative logistics with your
allies is placing yourself at greater risk,” says Lance Gatling, president of
Nexial Research, an aerospace consultant in Tokyo.
Abe, a defense hawk and the scion
of a prominent political family, has embarked on an overhaul of national
security strategy. In an historic step, his cabinet last year approved the
exports of military equipment and conducted a legal review that concluded Japan
had the right to deploy its military power abroad to protect its citizens and
back up allies under attack. In addition, the cabinet favored loosening limits
on when Japan’s Self-Defense Forces could use deadly force during United
Nations peacekeeping operations and international incidents near Japan that
fall short of full-scale war.
In April the Diet is expected to
debate a package of bills from Abe’s coalition government that would create a
legal framework for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to project its power overseas
like a normal military.
More
Another weekend, and with the EU
due to meet on Monday over Greece, that’s the unfortunate wrecked country not
some greasy spoon, it will be at one more weekend with Greece staying in the
dying euro zone of increasingly xenophobic, acrimonious continentals. On Monday
either Germany or Greece must blink. Have a great winter weekend everyone.
"Sooner or later both the Greek population and international creditors will tire of fighting a losing battle, leading to a break-up of the currency union as Greece pulls out, probably followed by other countries"
Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre of Economics and Business Research.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January
DJIA: +124 Down. NASDAQ: +220 Down. SP500: +178 Down.
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