We owe trillions of dollars, but Crude oil is at $86 a barrel, the DOW, S&P, and NASDAQ are making new highs almost everyday and unemployment is officially at 9.7%. Everything is great! Happy days are here again… Right? So is the DOW, S&P, and NASDAQ all going to keep going higher forever? Or are the teachings of a dead mathematician going...

The Pragmatic Capitalist It’s almost like bad case of 2008 deja vu.  Goldman Sachs says oil is going to $99 in the next 12 months as Bernanke’s reflation experiment drives prices higher.  According to their analysts energy and metals prices have “broken out” of their trading range and could head higher: “Energy and industrial metals...

Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock David Goldman states the obvious, but it’s worth being reminded of it: Give banks unlimited access to financing at close to 0% and a steep yield curve, exempt them from marking their worst assets to market, and they will earn money, even when their combined commercial loan book is shrinking at an...

GLD – Gold Exchange Traded Fund You can see from the chart below that the price of GLD looks to have bottomed after completing several typical price patterns from the breakdown we saw in December. The recent 4 months have provided a solid looking chart which should help gold take another run at the $1500 mark in the coming months. . USO Oil Fund . Crude...

The Mess That Greenspan Made The latest data from China shows that buyers have been undeterred by the many efforts undertaken by the government to cool the housing mania that continues to sweep the country. Property prices rose at a record pace last month and former Morgan Stanley analyst Andy Xie again sounds alarmist as detailed in this story...

In 1984, Elliott Wave International’s founder and president Robert Prechter won the U.S. Trading Championship, setting a new all-time profit record of 444.4% in a monitored real-money options account in 4 months. In the average 4-month contest, over 75% of contestants, mostly professionals,...

Tyler Durden “Buy stocks, buy bonds, buy oil, buy gold, buy something, buy Ambac – just close your eyes and throw your money at this market”, the Primary Dealers beg you. They need to sell you stuff. They have lots of stuff to sell, at bargain basement prices. There will never again be a downtick. The bond market is so extatic...

CalculatedRisk On a monthly basis, retail sales increased 1.6% from February to March (seasonally adjusted, after revisions), and sales were up 7.6% from March 2009 (easy comparison). Click on graph for larger image in new window. This graph shows retail sales since 1992. This is monthly retail sales, seasonally adjusted (total and ex-gasoline). The...

Joe Weisenthal of Money Game Here’s an important heads up. Today at 10:00 AM Ben Bernanke will attending a hearing on “The Economic Outlook.” There’s always some nervousness before he speaks (will he all of the sudden sound more hawkish?). Let us give you a preview of some things that might come up: On the deficit, Bernanke...

Courtesy of Mish If the US economy was about to reach “escape velocity” as Larry Summers says, small business optimism would not be in the gutter and sinking. Thus, proof that Larry Summers is in Fantasyland can be found in a NFIB report that shows Small Business Optimism Declines in March. The National Federation of Independent Business...

Evan Lazarus of T3 Live We have had a fair amount of success using the Volatility Index (VIX) to identify multiple directional changes in the market. Although sometimes for only brief periods of time, this indicator has been fairly accurate in allowing traders to identify areas where turns can occur. When the VIX closes outside its respective...

Tyler Durden Well that particular bailout lasted all of 24 hours: that’s what happens when the markets habituate to endless non-bailout bailouts. The half life of each successive one is now half the previous. The Athens Stock Exchange is once again seeing deep red (-2% at last check), and now the ever critical 10 Year bonds are starting to...

The Market Ticker … why are we creating a huge international bailout fund? The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today approved a ten-fold expansion of the Fund’s New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) and the transformation of the Fund’s premier standing credit arrangement into a more flexible and effective tool of crisis...

Scott Redler of T3Live As earnings season gets into gear, this tape will become that much more sector, stock and strategy specific, both to the long and short side. The Dow quietly closed over 11,000 and S&P barely touched 1,200, but its only a matter of time before they stretch a bit higher. I’m still in the Camp of 11,150-11,400 on the Dow...

Money Game Straight from the BLS: —– The U.S. Import Price Index rose 0.7 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The increase was attributable to higher prices for both fuel and nonfuel imports and followed a 0.2 percent decline in February. Export prices also rose 0.7 percent in March after declining...