Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist Central Banks and governments around the world have thrown everything they can muster at the financial crisis.  And up until now, it appears as though they have succeeded.  Equity markets are up 60%+ around the globe and investors are beginning to party like its 1999.  But a look underneath the hood shows that...

Courtesy of Phil’s Stock World What a wild week we are having! We dumped our shorts as planned yesterday morning, getting a very nice dip at the open and my 9:36 Alert to Members was even titled “Take Those Short Profits!” and our upside targets were set (as they were in the morning post) at: Dow 10,087, S&P 1,096, Nasdaq 2,173,...

A proverbial lightbulb went off at the SEC after the Bernie Madoff incident, telling the regulatory agency to educate individuals when it comes to investing. The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. As more and more first-time...

MISH Weekly unemployment claims have probably peaked this cycle. However, initial claims still remain stubbornly high. Here is the Weekly Unemployment Claims Report for the week ending October 17, 2009. In the week ending Oct. 17, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 531,000, an increase of 11,000 from the previous week’s...

Courtesy of The Mad Hedge Fund Trader Featured Trades: (GOOG), (MS), (1987 CRASH), (CVA), (AMSC) 1)When people ask me what is the one stock they should put in their kid’s college fund and forget about, I always give them the same company: Google (GOOG). The toll taker for the Internet that controls 70% of the global market for search just announced...

AC Investor ( click to enlarge ) ELNK tried to break out on Wednesday, but the week market pulled the stock down from its high on the day. The stock hit a high of $8.84 which is now resistance for Thursday’s follow through move. Although this trend is encouraging, the near-term outlook stays cautious till the stock closes conclusively above this level...

By Vadim Pokhlebkin It’s corporate earnings season again, and everywhere you turn, analysts talk about the influence of earnings on the broad stock market: US Stocks Surge On Data, 3Q Earnings From JPMorgan, Intel (Wall Street Journal) Stocks Open Down on J&J Earnings (Washington Post) European Stocks Surge;...

Zero Hedge Recently we presented our extended thoughts on how it was that the Fed first encouraged massive dollar-denominated, underfunding global positions, and subsequently, when funding became scarce, provided unprecedented capital bailouts to foreign Central Banks. The clip below takes the key theme we introduced and presents some of the political...

Zero Hedge-Submitted by Nic Lenoir of ICAP Let’s get a bit technical here, because it is required. As stated yesterday my concern was that the drop into the close last night would not lead to enough follow through in the morning and we would chop around the tops some more. Unfortunately I do think that this is what we are dealing with here. Looking...

Courtesy of Phil’s Stock World This is a good one! I’ve never embedded a video before but you just have to see this so I’m learning a new trick.  Keiser puts out some gems like: Goldmans Sachs, JPM, CitigGroup are all engaged in accounting fraud The American peasants have got to be the stupidest people in the World today.  They don’t...

Commodities so far this week have not changed much. But I can point out a few things for us to watch Thursday and Friday. Precious Metals – Gold GLD fund – Silver SLV Fund – PM Stocks GDX Fund We could start to see a shift between the price relationship between gold and the broad market. I pointed this out last week mentioning that gold and silver...

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain Starting in 1989, the world’s Central Banks became steady net sellers of their gold reserves which had been accumulated over the years. In addition to official gold sales, the banks also began to engage in gold leasing contract with bullion banks such as J. P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, et al. The gold was leased,...

My contact over at Robert Prechter’s financial analysis firm, Elliott Wave International, just told me about a free “Conquer the Crash Collection” from Prechter’s New York Times best-selling book. This valuable resource includes 8 lessons on topics critical to your financial survival, including: what you should do with your pension...

Beige Book released by FOMC On “economic improvement” (even the Fed is having a tough day with the spin on this one): Reports of gains in economic activity generally outnumber declines, but virtually every reference to improvement was qualified as either small or scattered. For example, Dallas cited slight improvements residential real...

MISH Paul Farrell on MarketWatch is writing about the Death of the ‘Soul of Capitalism’, referring to Jack Bogle, Marc Faber, and Michael Moore. Has capitalism lost its soul? Guys like Bogle and Faber sense it. Jack Bogle published “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism” four years ago. The battle’s over. The sequel should...