Investment Watch Blog

by GoldCore Is Brexit a Massive Threat to Globalisation? As Theresa May heads back to Brussels today in a last ditch effort to renegotiate her Brexit deal in order to get it passed through the British Parliament, we take a look not just at the current state of DIS-unity but also ask the question – … Read more

by Michael Snyder George Soros avoided a loss of more than 17 million dollars by dumping shares of Facebook, Netflix and Goldman Sachs just before the big crash started happening.  In other words, he made out like a bandit by selling at the peak of the market.  Is he smarter than all the rest of … Read more

by Michael Snyder Things just continue to get even worse for the U.S. housing industry.  New homes sales have been absolutely plummeting, homebuilder stocks have lost over a third of their value, and existing home sales just posted their biggest decline since 2014.  For years, we had been witnessing a real estate boom in the … Read more

by WARREN MOSLER Not good: Highlights Yesterday’s housing market index may have unexpectedly plummeted but today’s housing starts and permits report, though soft, at least is in the ballpark of expectations. Starts in October rose 1.5 percent to a 1.228 million annualized rate that compares with Econoday’s consensus for 1.240 million. Permits edged past expectations, at … Read more

UMich confidence drops as the rate hikes take effect. The people are starting to feel the rate hikes, businesses are starting to feel it, the Fed will be blamed. Credit card delinquencies shoot up. Realtors urge the Fed to slow the rate of interest rate increases. Mortgage financing down to an 18 month low. Trump … Read more

Jimmy Dore points out the hypocrisy of Dems meeting in secret to take money from big corporate donors, and using them for “progressive values”.   h/t mikeleoncraft    

A controversial law to tackle ‘fake news’ has been passed by French parliament – nearly a year after President Macron vowed to clamp down on what he called – ‘destabilisation’ efforts. https://youtu.be/T1hqysu-qpQ     h/t salvia_d

via BI: In the era of peak quantitative easing (QE), there weren’t many options out there for investors seeking a little bit of yield. Government bond yields were ultra-low, corporate debt yields, especially for investment grade, weren’t much higher, while commodities and cryptocurrencies and, in most instances, cash, didn’t even offer yields. That meant the … Read more

via David Yong (Bloomberg) — Signs of credit stress globally are increasing. In Asia, prices for the region’s riskiest debt slid to the lowest level in almost seven years, and the cost to protect against default climbed amid a sell-off in global markets. The average price for junk-rated corporate notes fell to 90 cents on the … Read more

by sundance [OK, take note – this official Butte County statement now leads me to add a ‘Paradise Fire’ tab to the category listings on the right margin of the page.  This evolving story deserves continued and ongoing review.] Today, Butte County health officials are establishing a the legal predicate to stop residents of Paradise, CA … Read more

by jessefelder “To achieve superior investment results, you have to hold non-consensus views regarding value, and they have to be right. That’s not easy… The good news is that the prevalence of first level thinkers increases the returns available to second level thinkers. To consistently achieve superior investment returns, you must be one of them.” -Howard … Read more

BY SRSROCCO Global debt increased at the fastest rate at the beginning of 2018.  In just one quarter, total global debt jumped by more than $8 trillion.  That is quite surprising as total world debt rose by $22 trillion for the full year in 2017.  Thus, the increase in global debt last year averaged $5.5 … Read more

Think back to when you saw that first Star Wars movie from 1977, and how the Death Star – this massive, cold, metal, ruthless, demonic Imperial battle station the size of a moon – was armed, mobilized & brutal enough to outright zap entire planets to bits from open space with its harnessed, martialized, concentrated, … Read more