Louisiana students are afraid they could lose a scholarship next year that covers a big part of their college costs. A massive state budget shortfall puts the college TOPS scholarships in jeopardy.
Source: 50,000 college students could lose scholarships
By Tyler Durden
The 2016 market can be described as a sequential bursting of pain trades: first it was the momentum trade; then it was the whipsawed action in Treasurys where record shorts were burned on the way up, and then longs screamed when central banks unleashed the latest coordinated attempt at reflation, then it was the FX whipsaws where central bank easing led to the opposite reaction in the underlying currencies (as noted earlier), then the sudden trapdoor under the USD which many had expected would continue rising, then it was the healthcare sector where hedge fund hotels got crushed in the latest Valeant fiasco, and so forth.
But while all those are known – especially to those who have been steamrolled by them – according to Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett, the biggest pain trade is the following:
The World’s Most Painful Chart...uncanny correlation between Chinese renminbi & Facebook/Petrobras pair-trade (Chart 1); few have been positioned for 2016’s biggest pain trade…appreciation of the renminbi; CNH (China renminbi), CL1 (oil), H0A0 (high yield) = lead indicators of risk rally, drivers of performance pain.
And with surprising headlines such as this one hitting on a daily basis:
we expect many more pain trades to materialize in the coming weeks as the central banks once again do everything they can to steamroll the market in unleashing another burst of inflation, even as the end demand is simply not there.
Source: Hartnett: "This Is The World’s Most Painful Chart"
By Tyler Durden
WTI crude extends it exuberant ramp to a 3rd day – heading for its 5th weekly gain – the longest since May, climbing above $42, reaching its highest in 3 months amid dollar weakness, falling output, and continued hope of a production freeze (at record levels with a record glut and weakening demand).
Brent is moving in parallel with WTI, testing key resistance level, according to Bloomberg technical strategist.
“The dollar has weakened quite significantly over the last few days and that has had some affect,” says ABN Amro energy economist Hans van Cleef.
“There is positive momentum at the moment — the floor in oil price is being set higher and higher and that is boosting momentum upward… The positive sentiment is driven by April production freeze talks,” says van Cleef, noting this added to slowing U.S. production, falling rig count.
What is most worrying, however, is this means Dennis Gartman has just a $2 window until “the end of his lifetime” at the dreaded $44.
Source: Gartman Has Less Than $2 To Live As Oil Rises Above $42
By Tyler Durden
WTI crude extends it exuberant ramp to a 3rd day – heading for its 5th weekly gain – the longest since May, climbing above $42, reaching its highest in 3 months amid dollar weakness, falling output, and continued hope of a production freeze (at record levels with a record glut and weakening demand).
Brent is moving in parallel with WTI, testing key resistance level, according to Bloomberg technical strategist.
“The dollar has weakened quite significantly over the last few days and that has had some affect,” says ABN Amro energy economist Hans van Cleef.
“There is positive momentum at the moment — the floor in oil price is being set higher and higher and that is boosting momentum upward… The positive sentiment is driven by April production freeze talks,” says van Cleef, noting this added to slowing U.S. production, falling rig count.
What is most worrying, however, is this means Dennis Gartman has just a $2 window until “the end of his lifetime” at the dreaded $44.
Source: Gartman Has Less Than $2 To Live As Oil Rises Above $42
By Tyler Durden
Overnight Media Digest
WSJ
– Efforts by many of the world’s central banks to weaken their currencies are failing, raising concerns about whether policy makers are losing the ability to wield control over financial markets. This was the case again in Japan on Thursday, when the dollar fell 1.1 percent against yen. (http://on.wsj.com/1Ua8DpS)
– TransCanada Corp, the company behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline project, agreed to buy Columbia Pipeline Group Inc for $10.2 billion. (http://on.wsj.com/1Ua8Idi)
– Lear Corp, one of the world’s biggest auto suppliers is pressing the United Auto Workers to agree to lower wages in exchange for relocating jobs from Mexico back to Detroit. (http://on.wsj.com/1Ua8K4W)
– WiseTech Global Ltd, a software company launched out of a Sydney basement in the 1990s, said it had lodged a prospectus with the Australia’s securities regulator for an initial public offering that could see it list with a market value of more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($765.50 million) after raising A$100 million-A$220 million. (http://on.wsj.com/1Ua8NNW)
– JPMorgan Chase & Co said its board authorized the repurchase of an additional $1.88 billion of the New York bank’s stock through the end of the second quarter. (http://on.wsj.com/1UaaJWR)
– Since announcing plans to sell a minority stake in its Paramount Pictures studio three weeks ago, Viacom Inc said it has received interest from three dozen companies, even as Paramount is experiencing a particularly weak quarter at the box office. (http://on.wsj.com/1UaaMC5)
FT
* SNP will not match Osborne’s tax cut for higher earners. (http://bit.ly/1RpGOmz)
* Disgraced former FIFA president Blatter paid $3.7 mln salary. (http://bit.ly/1RpGR1E)
* Google to sell robot maker Boston Dynamics. (http://bit.ly/1RpHict)
Overview
* Scottish National Party …read more
Source: Frontrunning: March 18
By Sprott Money
Hold your real assets outside of the banking system in one of many private international facilities –>
“Statistics can be used to say anything.”
Many readers are familiar with this cliché, but few understand its real significance . Numbers don’t lie, meaning the raw data which we collect on a nearly infinite number of subjects. Statistics, on the other hand, are rarely just raw data. Instead, they are numbers that have been massaged (i.e. manipulated) with various adjustments.
Deception and deceit enters into the picture when our governments (and charlatan economists ) create their statistics, and do so by making adjustments which are completely indefensible from an analytical standpoint. These adjustments don’t improve upon the raw data in terms of adding clarity, but rather they pervert the data into numbers which cease to have any resemblance to the real world.
Thus, with their adjusted statistics, these frauds-with-numbers can make the U.S. Great Depression look like a recovery. An even more obvious example is found in all the imaginary “jobs” the U.S. government claims to have created during its imagined recovery .
Fewer and fewer people are working in the U.S. every year, and virtually every month. Since the start of the “recovery,” the U.S. economy has lost an additional 3+ million jobs. The “11 million new jobs” boasted of by the political puppets, and manufactured by charlatan economists, never existed. They were completely created with mammoth – and bogus – adjustments.
“Numbers don’t lie – people do.”
This brings us to the silver market, and some numbers that illustrate some unequivocal truths. There are few better sources for numbers on silver than precious metals icon, Eric Sprott. In a recent interview withThe Daily Coin , Sprott provided a few interesting numbers.
Silver is mined at an 11:1 ratio to gold. This is raw data. This becomes significant when we look more raw data numbers: the natural occurrence of these two metals in the Earth’s crust. Silver is approximately 17 times as plentiful as gold. Therefore, all things being equal, we should expect silver to be mined at a near-identical ratio of 17:1.
Instead, silver is under-produced by roughly 50%. How? Why?
We know it could not possibly be due to lack of interest or demand. Historically, over a span of thousands of years, the price ratio between silver and gold was a very steady 15:1. This means that (over thousands of years) humanity has exhibited a slight price preference for silver. It occurs at a 17:1 ratio, but people have been willing to pay for it at a slightly higher 15:1 ratio.
In more modern times, we have proof that humanity’s desire for silver hasn’t waned at all. As was explained in a previous commentary , the silver market has been in a state of supply deficit …read more
Source: Silver Fundamentals: The Numbers Don’t Lie
The market meltdown of 2016 has turned into a market miracle. The Dow turned positive for the year on Thursday, recovering from a scary loss of as many as 1,974 points.
Source: Stocks have made an incredible rebound
The market meltdown of 2016 has turned into a market miracle. The Dow turned positive for the year on Thursday, recovering from a scary loss of as many as 1,974 points.
Source: Stocks have made an incredible rebound
Turns out the middle class aren’t the only ones suffering from stagnating incomes. The income of the Top 1% is also below where it was before the Great Recession.
Source: The Top 1% haven’t recovered yet, either
T-Mobile’s controversial “Binge On” program has added an industry heavyweight to its streaming video service lineup.
Source: Google agrees to join T-Mobile’s ‘Binge On’
Welcome to Esh Carmel Blog.
