Dow Jones Industrial Average

"Absent the central banks, we would be in the later stages of a credit cycle," warns Principal Global Investors's David Blake as 2015 has now seen the most corporate debt downgrades since 2009 and the upgrade-downgrade ratio crashes to financial crisis lows. A lot of people are recognising we are closer to the end of the credit cycle than the beginning, and while stocks have bounced back dramatically as Dana Lyons' details, junk bonds have not; a combination normally associated with more extensive bear markets and recessions. As BofAML analysts warned "the slow moving train wreck seems to be accelerating."

If one looks at the NDX alone, one would have to conclude that the bull market is perfectly intact. The same is true of selected sub-sectors, but more and more sectors or stocks within sectors are waving good-bye to the rally. Even NDX and Nasdaq Composite have begun to diverge of late, underscoring the extreme concentration in big cap names. Naturally, divergences can be “repaired”, and internals can always improve. The reality is however that we have been able to observe weakening internals and negative divergences for a very long time by now, and they sure haven’t improved so far. In terms of probabilities, history suggests that it is more likely that the big caps will eventually succumb as well.

"Fed officials suggested they had become less concerned in recent weeks about turbulent financial markets and uncertain economic developments overseas ... open[ing] the door more explicitly than they have before to raising rates at a final 2015 meeting in December."

Another day, another "crackdown" by the CFTC on an "evil spoofing mastermind."

The 30 stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average currently trade for an average of 14.8x next year’s consensus earnings.  But... Everyone knows Wall Street analysts are always too optimistic, so what if we just look at the lowest estimate for each company? The driver of market pessimism sits at the top of the income statement – the Street’s worst case revenue estimates call for a decline of 1.7% in 2016.  Now, Q3 earnings season is unlikely to provide much comfort here; why should corporate managements go out on a guidance limb when their stocks are down on the year?  All this points to further volatility in October, and with a bias to the downside.

Every year ending in a '5' has posted a positive return since 1875. In other words, the last 13 '5' years have left stock investors "high-fiveing" each other. However, the number of times the S&P 500 has finished the year positive - after being down 6% at end of Q3 - is ONE!

It takes ignorance on an almost unbelievable level to try to claim that “nothing is happening” in the financial world right now.

When will the “nothing is happening” crowd finally wake up?

Rickards said that gold is like “fire insurance on your house” ... “Nobody wants their house to burn down but if it does you are glad you have some insurance”. 

It is time for a comprehensive audit of Janet Yellen ’s Federal Reserve - and not just for the reasons presidential candidate Rand Paul and others have given. The Fed needs to be audited to see if its ruling body has broken the law by manipulating financial markets that are outside its jurisdiction.

Whatever the message is in these mega intra-week rebounds (if there is one), we're afraid it just hasn’t been the “out of the woods” bullish sign that many were hoping it was.

Gold rose 3.5% in August as stocks globally saw sharp falls on growing concerns about the Chinese and the global economy.  

A defensive trading idea that appreciates during a sell-off and is even better than holding extra cash!

During Monday's flash crashing mayhem, the fragility of the ETF pricing system was exposed for all to see. While common sense dictates that the extreme market moves, trading halts, and tripped circuit breakers may have had quite a lot to do with the epic divergences between NAV and unit pricing, the real culprit was a "computer glitch" caused by a botched "systems change" last Saturday. The fact that the trouble calculating NAVs across nearly 800 mutual funds happened on the very same day as the flash crash is strictly coincidence. 

Every Federal Reserve Chair since 1979 has faced a notable challenge in the first 12-20 months of their tenure – something akin to capital markets “Bullies” hazing the new kid at school. Paul Volcker had the 1979-1980 Iranian oil shock/recession, Alan Greenspan the 1987 Stock Market Crash, and Ben Bernanke the 2007 Financial Crisis. Their responses shaped market perceptions about Federal Reserve priorities and set the stage for the remainder of their tenures, from Inflation-Fighting Volcker to Save-the-World Bernanke. Now, it is Chair Yellen’s turn...