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Stock buybacks and dividend payments are on the verge of gushing out of Wall Street banks’ faucets and breaking through the proverbial dam.
Just six months ago, participants in a monthly survey conducted by too-big-to-fail Deutsche Bank were asked, “[What] do you think are the biggest risks to global financial markets in 2021?”
What’s it all mean? Are we at an inflection point in market land now, and the big bull market is over? Probably not just yet. That said, Quad hangovers can indeed extend several days, as traders reposition and rethink their futures roll outs. But make no mistake, the Fed’s statements, along with Bullard’s opinion, has changed the narrative some. We might see a much more volatile next two weeks as they try and square up all of this. Caution is warranted.
Flying below the radar across the country, under the shadow of the better-known student loan crisis, colleges and universities have been having trouble paying their bills.
Axios’ Kate Marino believes there’s a reckoning coming in higher education — especially for smaller, private liberal arts schools — that’s been years in the making.
Over in Russia they’ve asked all foreign migrant workers to return home by June 15th. Why would they do that? Russia has a labor shortage to begin with, so they use Asian’s to bolster the workforce. Why send them home?
The US has requested that Americans living in Russia should come home. When? By June 15th if possible. Why? Why kick out the migrant workers and why have US Citizens come back? Why will Visa’s to Russia not be given out any more?
But as time went on and I got older and maybe wiser by a brain cell or two, I started to see silver in a whole different light. By the time 2007 rolled around, and I had spent a few years “looking into this stuff,” my opinion swung 180 degrees. I still don’t much like it for jewelry, but that’s the mechanic side of me talking. When properly polished, it has its own form of warmth that I can indeed appreciate. It can look quite nice, as long as you keep the tarnish away.
The bottom line however, no matter what sort of investing/trading you wish to do, the most important thing is your risk management. I’ve been in this game for over 26 years. I’ve seen so many people “blow up” because when the market was hot, and they were making gains every day, that they thought they were geniuses. But, then the market decided to roll over into a bear market, or even just a good correction, and they got crushed, losing it all. It’s all about risk.
To paraphrase Kitco’s Neils Christensen, “…what investors have been waiting for has arrived” — gold pushing through the $1,900 level and moving into positive territory for the year.
Gold finished up a good week in the New York spot and the August futures markets yesterday, closing at $1,904.50 and $1,906.30, respectively.
Spot gold’s $27, 1.4% rise this week is its best monthly gain since July — it’s up $103, or 6.8%, in May — turned its movement positive for the year.
And now, its momentum is poised to push prices to $2,000 and above by the end of the year, sweeping aside the skepticism — and manipulation — of gold bears.
According to many analysts, gold's rally is just getting started, particularly as threat of rising inflation spreads.
On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan, leader of an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, called for a nationwide day of remembrance later that month. “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed.
So lets chat about gold for a minute. If scarcity is an attribute, then gold’s got a lot of it. Jim Rickards was recently interviewed and he told the host that while visiting several of the most major gold refiners/minters, all of them told him that “there’s just no gold around.”
This week Bitcoin was in for a rocky ride. The Chinese came out and talked about how it’s banned in China, and wouldn’t be allowed to be used for any transactions. That knocked bitcoin down for a 30% plunge in one day. Why would they do that? Because China has slowly launched its digital Yuan, and it’s not going well. The people are not adopting it and using it as they hoped. So, they did what any communist dictatorship would do. They banned the competition, then they simply repeated the ban to the masses again.
I’m going to hop around a bit here today, so try and follow the plot I’m laying out. First off, if you follow markets, you know that this week the PPI and CPI both came in blazing hot.
We just passed Biden’s first 100 days. How are things going? Well his first move was to cancel the keystone pipeline and ruin the lives of thousands of people who made their living working it. Within weeks, energy costs spiked.
Once again, it’s time to keep our keen eyes on the target — gold’s and silver’s long-term price appreciation.
With inflation on the rise (you decide whether it’s temporary or ongoing), keeping real interest rates ultra-low, these metals are poised for a ride to the moon and beyond.
Less Americans getting infected, more Americans getting vaccinated, $6 trillion in government spending, with at least $4 trillion more on the table, and many trillions more from an anything-goes Fed.
What do they have in common? They’re all converging to create what giddy economists and others, like Axios’ Nicholas Johnston, say will be “a year of U.S. economic growth for the record books.”
With those kind of numbers (think 10 zeros!), it better be record-setting!