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Gold, Silver, Stocks, Bonds Plunge On Fed Noise And China Debt Crisis Risk Commodities / Gold and Silver 2013 Jun 20, 2013 - 04:14 PM GMT By: GoldCore Today’s AM fix was USD 1,303.25, EUR 986.34 and GBP 842.38 per ounce. Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,366.00, EUR 1,019.86 and GBP 874.91 per ounce. Gold fell $16.10 or 1.18% yesterday and closed at $1,351.00/oz. Silver sank to $21.25 and ended down 1.25%. Bonds, shares plus gold and silver fell sharply around the world this morning after the U.S. Federal Reserve again suggested an end to their easy money policies. Data...

Global Recession Forecast - Is PIMCO's Bill Gross Wrong Again? Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2013 June 17, 2013 - 05:01 PM GMT By: Money Morning Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: Stuart Varney put the question directly to me last week during his Fox Business show: What do I make of comments from PIMCO's Bill Gross...that he's projecting a 60% chance of a global recession in the next three to five years? Now, Bill Gross is obviously one of the most powerful men in the world. PIMCO, the firm he founded, is the world's biggest bond manager. He has assets under management of...

JIM O'NEILL: We Could See A Bond Crash Steven Perlberg Jun. 14, 2013, 12:33 PM As the market speculates on when the Fed will begin to slow its quantitative easing program, former Goldman Sachs Asset Management chairman Jim O'Neill isn't alone in believing a taper would mean turbulence for financial markets. But for O'Neill, it would also "not be a stretch" to see 5% yields on the 10-year Treasury, reports Bloomberg. Given the 10-year's current 2.11% yield, that would imply a big sell-off in the bond market. O'Neill talked about that — and his prediction for a bond crash —...

BOFA: 'RISKS OF A BOND CRASH ARE HIGH' Sam Ro May 31, 2013, 11:02 AM Bonds have been tumbling for most of the month, and most analysts have warned that it could get even uglier. In a note to clients yesterday titled "Bubble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble," Bank of America Merrill Lynch strategist Michael Hartnett warns that the "risks of a bond crash are high." More from his note (emphasis added): As we have argued in recent years, history shows that major breakouts in equity markets tend to coincide with major inflection points in bond yields (Chart). This is now...

The Treasury Bond Selloff Is 'For Real' And The Volume Is Gigantic Matthew Boesler May 29, 2013, 2:05 PMIt's been a crazy few weeks in the Treasury bond market. After a big rally that began in mid-March, amid the outbreak of the Cypriot financial crisis and fears over a slowdown in global growth, Treasuries have given up all of their gains, and bond yields are now rising to the highest levels in over a year. This morning, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury hit a high of 2.23%. Naturally, there is a lot of debate over where yields go...

NIKKEI 15,000! First Time Since January 2008 Sam Ro May 14, 2013, 8:07 PM Markets just opened in Asia, and they're following the U.S. markets way higher. Of note is Japan's Nikkei 225, which just burst through 15,000. Dow Jones reports this is the first time the Nikkei has been above 15,000 since January 4, 2008. Leading the way is electronics maker Sony, which is up by around 12%. Hedge fund heavy hitter Dan Loeb made a proposal to management to split up the company. Loeb said he was willing to commit a significant amount of capital to support the...

GUNDLACH: Anyone Who Says Interest Rates Will Rise Soon Is 'Absolutely Wrong' Lance Roberts, Street Talk LiveMay 3, 2013, 10:52 AMJeffry Gundlach In the continuing series of reports from the 10thannual Strategic Investment Conference, presented Altegris Investments and John Mauldin, the question of why you should own bonds was answered by Jeff Gundlach who is the CEO and CIO of Double Line. Why own bonds? I have been presented with the question twice in my career. The first time was in the 90’s when bonds and stocks were highly correlated. If stocks rose, bond prices fell, and vice versa. Therefore,...

<p>Good News! Non-farm payrolls increase by 165,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 7.5%.</p> <p>But I thought the Sequester would destroy employment? Apparently not. The Administration’s Sequester Scare tactics failed.</p>

Uncertainty increased in global markets as investor fear grows. Recent Central Bank aggressive moves (Fed, Bank of Japan and South Korea) send a signal of global economic weakness. It didn’t help that former ECB executive board member Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi said that “policy makers led by President Mario Draghi will act to weaken the euro.” Is this the ECB’s return fire in the new currency war? US stock market indices are down today, particularly the NASDAQ index. And Europe is down over 2%. Real estate investment trusts (REITS) also tanked today. The volatility index VIX climbed today. Sovereign yields are up...

It’s not often — but not unpredecented — for Federal Reserve officials to make joint appearances. But Tuesday night’s gathering when Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker hosted Chicago Fed President Charles Evans was notable for the debate format that ensued from the opposite ends of the monetary policy spectrum.Lacker is a reliable hawk, who wants the central bank’s bond buying efforts to stop, and dissented on every policy decision last year (he doesn’t have a vote this year). Evans by contrast is a dove among doves, and an influential member who came up with the idea — now adopted by...

It is not surprising that they quickly found the source of their pain, the bond holders; those money loving, rich old white guys who know nothing but greed. It is their fault that huge lifelong pensions and free healthcare for life, regardless of how long you worked for the city has not turned Stockton into the utopia it should have been. It is amazing how greedy some people are, they simply don’t care about their fellow man. In a case that will most likely go to the US Supreme Court, the municipal bondholders will be pitted against the California Public...

If I move my savings to a brokerage account and purchase 2-year treasuries (the shortest term available at my broker) would that at least protect me from having my money stolen by the banks?

The decision of the government in Cyprus to simply take money out of people's bank accounts there sent shock waves around the world. People far removed from that small island nation had to wonder: "Can this happen here?" The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic. Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored. They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to. Multi-billion dollar corporations, whose...

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer asked the California attorney general Monday to investigate whether school officials were breaking the law by hiring banks and their political strategists to promote bond measures before voters. Lockyer did not name the schools or banks involved in these deals. But some of the examples he describes in a letter to Attorney General Kamala Harris are the same as the Register found in place at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified in a recent investigation.

Between Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, they have helped to produce huge asset bubbles through monetary easing. Take, for example, the FNC 30 RPI house price index and the Fed Funds rate since January 2000. Greespan retired on January 31, 2006 and Bernanke took over. THAT is an asset bubble! According to the Beige Book, the U.S. economy expanded at a modest to moderate pace across most of the country amid rising consumer demand for homes and autos, the Federal Reserve said. (Did they mean “investor demand for homes”?) But housing isn’t the only bubble created by The Fed. The...

Is the U.S. Becoming a Banana Republic Politics / US PoliticsMarch 05, 2013 - 02:40 PM GMT By: Michael Pento It is sad to say there are just two reasons why the U.S. is not yet a banana republic. The first reason is that the US dollar has not yet lost its world’s reserve currency status, which is helping to keep interest rates at record low levels. If the dollar, yen and euro were not involved in a currency war, the dollar’s intrinsic decline would become much more evident, causing domestic inflation to soar, and our bond market to immediately...

Yes, on February 22nd Moody’s lowered the bond rating for UK debt from AAA to Aa1. The result between February 22nd and today? The yield curve for UK sovereign bonds has fallen. I compare the US Treasury yield curve over the same time period with the UK Sovereign curve. The US yield curve shows a much smaller decline which, of course, was not downgraded. Yet. The UK 5 year credit default swaps (CDS) has fallen from 51 on February 21st to 47.30 on March 1st. If you look at the time distribution of UK sovereign debt, they have a big...

Japan goes full Bernanke and will probably pick a monetary dove as Bank of Japan governor while sequestration remains in play in the USA. Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s five-year note yields slid to an all-time low as the government neared a decision on who will run the central bank and expand monetary easing measures. Ten-year yields slid to a two-month low while the yen fell against all its major peers. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likely to nominate Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda as Bank of Japan governor and Kikuo Iwata as a deputy at the central bank,...

BOND GOD: The World Is Changing, And Bonds Are The Most Overbought I've Seen In My 55 Year Career Joe WeisenthalFeb. 3, 2013, 12:05 PMFor years, investors have watched in disbelief as the 30-year bull market in fixed-income assets has raged on, leaving bears in the dust. The bond skeptics are having another moment, as talk grows of a "great rotation" from bonds into equities, as rates finally start to rise, and the economy turns back into the old normal. Dan Fuss of Loomis Sayles is the third bond fund manager to be called a "bond god" (the other two...

Will the Fed End QE Summer 2013? Interest-Rates / Quantitative EasingJan 30, 2013 - 07:30 PM GMT By: Money Morning Jeff Uscher writes: Amid all of the hoopla over the Standard & Poor's 500 Index touching 1,500 on Friday, it seems few people noticed that the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds has risen to within a couple of basis points of 2%. That is nearly 30 basis points higher than it was one month ago and 10 basis points higher than one year ago. It seems as if the bond market is beginning to price in higher inflation at...