Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt Market H/T Zero Hedge Breaking The Silver Manipulation Barrier In 2011, so far gold has been the champion investment above and beyond any contender, including stocks and equities. At the announcement of the S&P downgrade of America’s credit rating, only gold showcased immunity. In fact, gold has thrived (as...

by Karl Denninger … but expecting a different result. The policy wonks have all been out the last couple of weeks extolling the “virtue” of the need to “stimulate” the economy now, but have fiscal restraint later. Of course “later” is defined as “when I chve office” and now is defined as “give...

Free Report Available Now During the past few years, The Federal Reserve has engaged in a “deliberate inflating policy.” This policy earned disfavor, both at home and abroad. Robert Prechter said this in the July Elliott Wave Theorist: “Foreign powers have been irate over the Fed’s deliberate inflating policy. At its outset,...

Hello fellow traders everywhere. Adam Hewison here co-founder of MarketClub with your weekend update for the trading week ending on 8/12/11. What a week of market swings and volatility. Now that the dust has settled, let’s examine what happened in the major markets we track. Out of the six markets we track every trading day, three markets were in...

High Chart Patterns Here’s the legend of a small sampling of international banks but interesting nevertheless: Black: Bank of Montreal ($BMO), Green: TD Bank ($TD), Blue: JP Morgan ($JPM),  Purple: Banco Santander ($STD),  Red: HSBC ($HBC), Orange: Bank of America ($BAC), Yellow: Citibank ($C), , Note how they look like they converge near the bottom...

by Karl Denninger    This decision is one of the best - and most-expansive – I’ve seen on the matter of health care and the “individual mandate.” The Court has struck the individual mandate, but decided against enforcing non-severability – a result that I found somewhat surprising, given the congressional record.  However,...

Courtesy of Phil of Phil’s Stock World Kudos to Dylan Ratigan for losing his temper and telling the TRUTH. Ratigan is everything a reporter used to be in the days when integrity mattered. He told CNBC to shove it rather than toe the line and push their snake oil and his show is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale media landscape....

Courtesy of Joshua M Brown of Reformed Broker I’m busy with a massive rebalance today, nibbling at equities after a 15% decline and some minor bond trimming to get my core accounts back to their weightings.  That said, I did want to take a moment to put this out there… One of the dumbest syllogisms in all of investing goes like this: The insiders...

by Karl Denninger If I hear one more time about how TARP “worked” I’m going to throw up. Let’s look at it in pure chart form, because that puts into stark relief the lie often told: TARP passed on 10/3/2008.  The XLF (Financial Sector exchange-traded fund)) at the open of that day stood at $20.19.  It never rose above that...

by Tyler Durden July retail sales came in line with expectations at 0.5%, which is to be expected: after all, as Bank of America most recent implosion demonstrates all too vividly suddenly, there is a favorable trade off to millions of Americans not paying their mortgage, and also maxing out their credit cards a unprecedented rates. Naturally, the negative...

Tim Iacono A new Gallup survey shows that consumer confidence has plunged to its lowest level since March of 2009. Apparently, the U.S. credit downgrade that followed a messy debt ceiling debate, both of which led to a plunging stock market all contributed to the souring mood. On a related (and equally dismal) note, Rasmussen reported that nearly...

From Brian Rogers of Fator Securities Macro Commentary: The “Our Capital Levels Are Adequate” Dance “Our capital levels are adequate.”  Perhaps it’s just me but It seems like every time the market sells off more than 10%, we end up hearing that phrase a lot.  Hmm, perhaps it has something to do with the huge amount of leverage still sitting...

by Tyler Durden There are those who say the upcoming short selling ban in all stocks in Italy and France, which according to CNBC will take place as soon as after the close today, or in one hour, will be beneficial to stocks. Then there are facts. To those who may have forgotten, on September 18, the SEC banned the shorting of all financials here in...

Tim Iacono Not yet even a third of the way through, August is already the most volatile month for stocks in over a year, now on track to have the most big daily point swings since late-2008 when, for a couple of months, 200+ point moves were the rule, not the exception. The period of  last August until two months ago – when QE2 was either anticipated...

Courtesy of Mish Today we saw yet another wild reversal in the markets led this time not by the US or Asia-Pacific but by Europe. When I went to bed this morning around 3:00 AM central, European futures were solidly in the green. This is what European markets look like now. European Stock Markets Carnage Everywhere There is carnage everywhere and...