NYSE Margin Debt Levels Historically Elevated
Below I plot the ratio of NYSE margin debt / NYSE equity market cap back to the early 1930s. Data is sourced from GFD. As global equities peaked in Jan/Feb-18 the ratio hit 2.9%, a ~90-yr high not seen since…...
Analyst Price Target Changes as a Contrarian Indicator
Having spent three years on the sell-side as an equity research analyst, I know first-hand how the game works: You have price targets (Px) for stocks on your coverage list and if the market randomly corrects, your director of research…...
Trust: How Low Can you Go?
Occasionally I venture over to the Pew Research Center and review some of their polling data and related commentary covering a myriad of different issues of concern to US citizens. Numerous Pew polls go back many decades, making some of…...
See What Sticks
I’m going to throw a lot of charts at this post and let’s see if we can find out what seems most likely to stick thematically, if anything at all, when we’re done. How about EM to start. When discussed…...
More Evidence Supporting a Sizable Near-Term Gold Decline
Yesterday in this post we detailed why a Aug-93 outcome for gold that sees it decline ~600-700 bps in a single day was a heightened probability in the near-term. Today I offer additional, yet totally separate, evidence to support that…...
Near-Term Commdodity Resistance, but Big Picture Thematic Remains a World Beginning to Shift Away From Its Deflationary Anchor
In the chart below I highlight the CRB Index and the fact that at (A) it has rallied back up to test former 40-yr support line (1) after reaching less important, temporary support line (2) in Feb-16. Note that former 40-yr…
Increasingly Likely that the Past Year Has Been a Consolidation Pause Paving the Way for a Blow-Off Equity Rally
I increasingly struggle to find bearish historical precedents that line up with the market’s tone, tenor and structure over the past ~year. Though I was able to nail the collapse that came in Aug-15 right before it occurred and correctly saw…...
Additional Signs of Reflation and Implications for Gold
Earlier today in this post I discussed that the Producer Price Index for all commodities, or the PCAC Index (Bloomberg ticker), was signaling the potential for a strong global reflationary event to occur in the intermediate-term. I wanted to build on…...
Does a Major Reflationary Event Stand on the Horizon?
The PCAC Index (US PPI for all commodities) is plotted on a monthly basis below dating back to the early 1900s. As of the last print (Jan-16) and following a significant multi-year decline, it was a hair away from reaching…...
Unveiling a New (Bullish) Framework for 2016
I generally believe the name of the game when it comes to my investment process is to idea-generate objective, fact-based historical frameworks – be they statistical, technical, analog or all of the above – that help map out various contingencies of how…