This Week’s Market Sell-Off May Not Be Such a Bad Thing – The New York Times 08-21-15

Salient to Investors: The market drop this week looks more like a trivial downward bounce within a consistent range and a much-needed breather than a catastrophe in the making. Markets were priced for perfection in a world economy far from perfect.  $100 invested in stocks still buys only $5.59 in earnings, versus

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The S&P’s 13th Trip Thru 2100 Since February 13th: Call It Monetary Rigor Mortis – The Bull Is Dead – David Stockman’s Contra Corner 08-19-15

Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: The bull market is dead, yet stock option addicted corporate executives are buying their own drastically over-priced shares hand-over-fist. Corporate stock buybacks and dividends are back to late 2007 levels of all of net income, lured by 80 months of ZIRP and $3.5 trillion of debt monetization by

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Here Are the Ominous Signs a Crushing Stock Market Correction Looms – TheStreet.com 08-15-15

Salient to Investors: James Hickman writes: Uninterrupted streaks in which the S&P 500 closes within 10% of its all ­time peak historically precede sudden declines: viz the tech bubble of the 1990s and the credit/housing bubble of the 2000s. The median decline from the peak is ­43% and typically takes 13

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Gross Sees Global Economy Dangerously Close to Deflation – BloombergBusiness 08-07-15

Salient to Investors: Bill Gross at Janus Capital said: The global economy is dangerously close to deflationary growth. Any whiff of deflation and things tend to reverse and go badly. The CRB Commodity Index is lower than in 2008 when Lehman went bankrupt.  Oil, metals and crops have plunged due to

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Still Chop, Chop, Choppin’ At The Fed’s Front Door – David Stockman’s Contra Corner 08-06-15

David Stockman writes: Wall Street believes the sideways market of the last 6 months is a healthy market correction in time, not price, and that markets cannot go down unless there is a recession and that none is remotely in sight. We are in month 74 of the current recovery, beyond

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Birinyi’s S&P 3200 Call – Bull From A 30-Year Bull – David Stockman’s Contra Corner 08-05-15

Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: Laszlo Birinyi says S&P 3200 will be reached by 2017 because there is no reason it cannot keep rising. Since first meeting Birinyi in 1986, I do not ever recall when he was not bullish on equities. His call is wrong because the central bank fed 30-year bull run

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Fareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 08-02-15

Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: New America reports that, since 9-11, 74 people have been killed in America by terrorists vs. over 150,000 killed in gun homicides. ShootingTracker.com says that in the first 207 days of 2015 America had 207 mass shootings. Gunpolicy.org says America’s gun homicide rate is 50 times

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Market Manipulation Goes Global – Project-Syndicate 07-27-15

Salient to Investors: Stephen Roach at Yale writes: Market manipulation a la China is now standard operating procedure in policy circles around the world – the West just dresses up their manipulation in different clothes. QE is essentially an aggressive effort to manipulate asset prices: whether it has succeeded is debatable

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Central Banks Have Shot Their Wad – Why The Casino Is In For A Rude Awakening, Part I – David Stockman’s Contra Corner 07-25-15

Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: The central banks have shot their wad after increasing their aggregate balance sheet from $3 trillion to $22 trillion over the last 15 years, which falsified financial prices. The coming deflation will bring a plunge in corporate profits and collapsing prices of vastly inflated risk asset classes. The

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