Markets

Stock Markets All Over The World Crash As We Begin 2016

January 4, 2016January 4, 2016 by Michael

The first trading day of 2016 was full of chaos and panic. It started in Asia where the Nikkei was down 582 points, Hong Kong was down 587 points, and Chinese markets experienced an emergency shutdown after the CSI 300 tumbled 7 percent. When European markets opened, the nightmare continued. The DAX was down 459 points, and European stocks overall had their worst start to a year ever. In the U.S., it looked like we were on course for a truly historic day as well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 467 points at one stage, but some very mysterious late day buying activity helped trim the loss to just 276 points at the close of the market. The sudden market turmoil caught many by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. The truth is that a whole host of leading indicators have been telling us that this is exactly what should be happening. The global financial crisis that began in 2015 is now accelerating, and my regular readers already know precisely what is coming next.

The financial turmoil of the last 24 hours is making headlines all over the globe. It began last night in China. Very bad manufacturing data and another troubling devaluation of the yuan sent Chinese stocks tumbling to a degree that we have not seen since last August. In fact, the carnage would have probably been far, far worse if not for a new “circuit breaker” that China recently implemented. Once the CSI 300 was down 7 percent, trading was completely shut down for the rest of the day. The following comes from USA Today…

Under a new market “circuit breaker” rule in China established last year, which is designed to slow down markets and halt panic in the event of moves of 5% or more, the CSI 300, a large-company stock index in mainland China was halted for 15 minutes in mid-afternoon trading after diving more than 5%. But when shares headed lower once again just minutes after the initial trading halt, and losses for the day swelled to more than 7%, the new circuit breaker rules kicked in, prompting a shutdown of mainland China’s stock market for the day, according to Bloomberg.

After the first 15 minute halt, panic set in as Chinese traders rushed to get out of their trades before the 7 percent circuit breaker kicked in. This resulted in an absolutely chaotic seven minutes as investors made a mad dash for the exits…

The sell orders piled up fast on Monday at Shenwan Hongyuan Group, China’s fifth-biggest brokerage by market value.

China’s CSI 300 Index had just tumbled 5 percent, triggering a 15-minute trading halt, and stock investors were scrambling to exit before getting locked in by a full-day suspension set to take effect at 7 percent. When the first halt was lifted, the market reaction was swift: it took just seven minutes for losses to reach the limit as volumes surged to their highs of the day.

“Investors rushed to the door during the level-one stage of the circuit breaker as they fretted the market would go down further,” said William Wong, the head of sales trading at Shenwan Hongyuan in Hong Kong.

The financial carnage continued once the European markets opened. Markets were red all across the continent, and things were particularly bad in Germany. The DAX was down 459 points, and it is rapidly approaching the psychologically-important 10,000 barrier. Overall, it was the worst start to a year that the European markets have ever experienced.

When U.S. markets opened, unexpectedly bad U.S. manufacturing data seemed to add fuel to the fire. Monday morning we learned that our manufacturing sector is contracting at a pace that we haven’t seen since the last recession…

America’s manufacturing sector shrank for the second straight month in December. The industry’s key index — ISM — hit 48.2% in December, the lowest mark since June 2009. Anything below 50% is a contraction and a month ago it hit 48.6%.

The index has fallen for six straight months.

“The trend is certainly heading in a direction that would ring alarm bells,” says Sam Bullard, senior economist at Wells Fargo.

This is yet another sign that tells us that the U.S. economy has already entered the next recession.

And what happens to the markets during a recession?

They go down.

In addition to the bad data that we got from the U.S. and China, there was another number that was also extremely troubling.

South Korean exports have traditionally been considered a key leading indicator for the entire global economy, and on Monday we learned that they were down a whopping 13.8 percent in December from a year earlier…

One of the more reliable indicators of the global economy continues to confirm fears of a worldwide slowdown.

South Korean exports — also referred to as the world’s economic canary in the coal mine — fell 13.8% in December from a year earlier.

This was a deterioration from the 4.8% decline in November, and it was much worse than the 11.7% decline expected by economists.

The “nothing is happening” crowd may not be willing to admit it yet, but the truth is that a major global economic slowdown is already happening.

And what happened to global markets today is perfectly consistent with the longer term patterns that have been emerging over the past six months or so.

In the weeks and months to come, things are going to get even worse. There will always be days when the markets are up, but don’t let those days fool you into thinking that the crisis is over. In the western world we are so accustomed to 48 hour news cycles, and many of us seem to be incapable of focusing on trends that develop over longer periods of time.

If I was going to put together a scenario for a global financial crisis for a textbook, what we have seen over the past six months or so would be perfect. Things are playing out exactly how they should be, and that means big trouble for the rest of 2016.

But that doesn’t mean that we have to live in fear. In fact, I just wrote an entire article entitled “2016: A Year For Living With No Fear“. It is when times are at their worst that our character is put to the test. Some will respond to what happens in 2016 with courage and strength, and others will respond with fear and panic.

As things start falling apart all around us this year, how will you respond?

What Really Happened In 2015, And What Is Coming In 2016…

January 3, 2016January 3, 2016 by Michael

A lot of people were expecting some really big things to happen in 2015, and most of them did not happen. But what did happen? It is my contention that a global financial crisis began during the second half of 2015, and it threatens to greatly accelerate as we enter 2016. During the last six months of the year that just ended, financial markets all over the planet crashed, trillions of dollars of global wealth was wiped out, and some of the largest economies in the world plunged into recession. Here in the United States, 2015 was the worst year for stocks since 2008, nearly 70 percent of all investors lost money last year, and it is being projected that the final numbers will show that close to 1,000 hedge funds permanently shut down within the last 12 months. This is what the early stages of a financial crisis look like, and the worst is yet to come.

If we were entering another 2008-style crisis, we would expect to see junk bonds crashing. When financial trouble starts, it usually doesn’t start with the biggest and strongest companies. Instead, it usually starts percolating on the periphery. And right now bonds of firms that are considered to be on the risky side of things are rapidly losing value.

In the chart below, you can see that a high yield bond ETF that I track very closely known as JNK started crashing in the middle of 2008. This crash began to unfold before the horrific crash of stocks in the fall. Investors that saw junk bonds crashing in advance and pulled their money out of stocks in time saved an enormous amount of money.

Now, for the very first time since the last financial crisis, we are seeing junk bonds crash again. In December, there was finally a sustained crash through the psychologically-important 35.00 level, and at this point JNK is sitting a bit below 34.00. This stunning decline is a giant red flag that tells us that stocks will soon follow in the exact same direction…

In 2015, Third Avenue Management shocked Wall Street when they froze withdrawals from a 788 million dollar mutual fund that was highly focused on junk bonds. Investors that couldn’t get their money out began to panic, and other mutual funds now find themselves under siege. If junk bonds continue to crash, this will just be the beginning of the carnage.

One of the big reasons why junk bonds are crashing is because of the crash in the price of oil. Over the past 18 months, the price of oil has plummeted from $108 a barrel to $37 a barrel.

There has only been one other time in all of history when we have ever seen an oil price crash of this magnitude. That was in 2008 – just before the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression…

Why can’t people see the parallels?

Crashes are happening all around us, and yet so many of the “experts” seem completely blind to what is going on.

Unlike 2008, the price of oil is not expected to rapidly rebound any time soon. The following comes from CNN…

Crude prices dropped a whopping 35% last year and are hovering around $37 a barrel. That’s a level not seen since the global financial crisis.

It won’t get better any time soon. Most oil experts believe prices will bounce back in late 2016, but they expect more pain first.

Goldman Sachs forecasts that oil will average about $38 a barrel in February, even lower than for most of 2015.

Meanwhile, the prices of industrial commodities have been crashing as well. For example, the chart below shows that the price of copper started crashing hard just before the great financial crisis of 2008, and the exact same thing is happening once again right before our very eyes…

Things are unfolding just as we would expect they would during the initial stages of a new global financial crisis.

And we have already seen a full blown stock market crash in many of the largest economies around the planet. For instance, just look at what has been happening in Brazil. The Brazilians have the 7th largest economy in the world, and Goldman Sachs says that they have plunged into an “outright depression“. In the chart below, you can see the sharp downturn that took place in August, and Brazilian stocks actually kept falling all the way through the end of 2015…

We see a similar thing when we look at our neighbor to the north. Canada has the 11th largest economy on the entire planet, and I recently wrote a lengthy article about the economic difficulties that the Canadians are now facing. 2015 was a very bad year for Canadian stocks as well, and they just kept falling steadily all the way through December…

Of course nobody can forget what happened to China. The Chinese have the second largest economy on the globe, and news about their economic slowdown in making headlines almost every single day now.

Last summer, Chinese stocks crashed about 40 percent, and they did manage to bounce back just a bit since then. But they are still down about 30 percent from the peak of the market…

And there is plenty more that we could talk about. European stocks just had their second worst December ever, and Japanese stocks are down about 500 points in early trading as I write this article.

Here in the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Transports, the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 all had their worst years since 2008. As I mentioned the other day, 674 hedge funds shut down during the first nine months of 2015, and it is being projected that the final total for the year will be up around 1000.

But we aren’t hearing much about this financial carnage on the news yet, are we?

Many people that I talk to still think that “nothing is happening”, but don’t you dare say that to Warren Buffett.

He lost 7.8 billion dollars in 2015.

How would you feel if you lost 7.8 billion dollars in a single year?

The truth, of course, is that signs of financial chaos are erupting all around us. Corporate profits are plunging, the bond distress ratio just hit the highest level that we have seen since the last financial crisis, and corporate debt defaults have risen to the highest level that we have seen in about seven years.

If you run a business, you may have noticed that fewer people are coming in and it seems like those that do come in have less money to spend. Economic activity is slowing down, and inventories are piling up. In fact, wholesale inventories have now risen to the highest level that we have seen since the last recession…

Do you notice a theme?

So many things that have not happened in six or seven years are now happening again.

History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme, and it astounds me that more people cannot see that 2015/2016 is looking eerily similar to a replay of 2008/2009.

Another number that I watch closely is the velocity of money. When an economy is running well, money tends to circulate efficiently through the system. But when an economy gets into trouble, people get scared and start holding on to their money. As you can see from the chart below, the velocity of money declined during every single recession since 1960. This is precisely what one would expect. And of course during the recession that started in 2008, the velocity of money plunged precipitously. But then a funny thing happened when that recession supposedly “ended”. The velocity of money just kept going down, and now it has fallen to an all-time record low…

A big reason for this is the ongoing decline of the middle class. In 2015, we learned that middle class Americans now make up a minority of the population for the first time ever.

But if you go back to 1971, 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle class households.

Meanwhile, the share of the income pie that the middle class takes home has also continued to shrink.

In 1970, the middle class brought home approximately 62 percent of all income. Today, that number has fallen to just 43 percent.

As the middle class is systematically destroyed, the number of Americans living in poverty just continues to grow. And those that often suffer the most are the children. It may be hard for you to believe, but the number of homeless children in the U.S. has increased by 60 percent over the past six years.

60 percent!

How in the world can anyone dare to claim that “things are getting better”?

Anyone that says that should be ashamed of themselves.

We are in the midst of a long-term economic collapse that is now accelerating once again.

Anyone that tries to tell you that “things are getting better” and that 2016 is going to be a better year than 2015 is simply not being honest with you.

A new global financial crisis erupted during the last six months of 2015, and this new financial crisis is going to intensify throughout the early months of 2016. Financial institutions will begin falling like dominoes, and this will result in a great credit crunch around the world. Businesses will fail, unemployment will skyrocket and millions will suddenly be faced with economic despair.

By the time it is all said and done, this new financial crisis will be even worse than what we experienced back in 2008, and the suffering that we will see around the world will be off the charts.

So does that mean that I am down about this year?

Not at all. In fact, my wife and I are greatly looking forward to 2016. In the midst of all the chaos and darkness, there will be great opportunities to do good and to make a difference.

What a great shaking comes, people go looking for answers. And I think that this will be a year when millions of people start to understand that our politicians and the mainstream media are not telling them the truth.

Yes, great challenges are coming. But now is not a time to dig a hole and try to hide from the world. Instead, this will be a time for those that have prepared in advance to love others, help others and show them the truth.

What about you?

Are you ready to be a light during the dark times that are coming?

Please feel free to join the conversation by posting a comment below…

Expert That Correctly Predicted Market Moves In July, August And September Says Stocks Will Crash In November

October 21, 2015October 21, 2015 by Michael

When someone is right over and over and over, eventually people start paying attention. Personally, I have learned to tune out the “forecasts” of most “economic experts” out there. As an attorney, I was trained to be skeptical, and I have found that most forecasts about what the financial markets are going to do are not worth the paper they are printed on. However, once in a while something comes along that really gets my attention. Over the past few days, I have seen a number of references to the remarkable forecasts of Bo Polny of Gold 2020 Forecast. In recent months he has correctly predicted that U.S. stocks would begin to drop in July, that there would be a huge plunge in August and that that the month of September would be rather uneventful. Now he is saying that he expects “November to be a complete meltdown on the U.S. and world markets”. Just because he has been right in the past does not guarantee that he will be correct this time around, but lots of people (like me) are starting to pay attention.

So how does Polny come to his conclusions? Well, he uses something that most of us hated when we were in school – mathematics. The following comes from the Daily Sheeple…

Cyclical analyst Bo Polny of Gold 2020 Forecast utilizes advanced mathematical formulas and years of cyclical analysis to make forecasts about global stock markets. In late July he noted that U.S. stock markets had hit a top and that investors should prepare for a rapid down-move in the Dow Jones and other indexes. As we now know, that prediction has come to pass.

But while many on Wall Street panicked, Polny noted that the crash was not yet imminent and that the month of September would be relatively calm, with no major moves up or down forecast to occur. Once again, his analysis proved accurate.

I want to stress that I do not know if he will be right this time around. When trying to forecast the future of the markets, there are thousands of moving pieces, and many of them cannot be accounted for easily. But without a doubt the markets are perfectly primed for a major crash, so it would not surprise me in the least if he did turn out to be correct.

And as I mentioned above, Polny does have a solid track record of accuracy…

*****

Bo’s model appears to have an impressive track record of accurate predictions, including the following:

Price of gold reaching $1900 in 2011
China’s stock market peak in April 2015
Hong Kong market peak on April 29 2015
U.S. stock market drop beginning in July 2015
Sharp drop in the stop market in August 2015
U.S. stock market uneventful in September 2015

*****

If Polny is right again this time, next month will be the most significant month for global financial markets since the crash of 2008. Here is more from Z3News…

*****

In an interview with Future Money Trends on October 17 2015, he made the following comments:

“Now we are expecting the next leg down on the U.S. and world markets on the dollar. What we are forecasting now is the lows of August are all going to break. They could break in the month of October yet, but we believe they will break no problem into November. We expect November to be a complete meltdown on the U.S. and world markets.”

He also posted the following statements on his website:

“If you thought the crash of August 2015 was bad; November 2015 is expected to usher in the START of the US Stock, Dollar, and Treasuries Market MELTDOWN!!!”

“The end of this year ushers in the start of an Economic Meltdown that is to last years! The U.S. Dollar, Treasuries, and Stock Market bomb is set to blow in November 2015!”

*****

Polny is projecting that stocks could ultimately fall by as much as 70 percent by the time it is all said and done. You can watch a full interview where he discusses these things right here.

Meanwhile, early signs of the kind of trouble that Polny is warning about continue to pop up.

On Wednesday, the stock price of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world absolutely crashed after a report came out claiming that it was in danger of suffering the same fate as Enron…

Hedge fund darling Valeant Pharmaceuticals is getting hammered after short-selling-firm Citron Research published a report comparing it to Enron.

The Canadian drug company’s stock was last down about 25% at around $110. It had fallen as low as $88.50.

The stock has been popular among hedge funds.

It ranked No. 10 on Goldman Sachs’ stocks that “matter most” to hedge funds list for the second quarter. According to Goldman, 32 funds had the stock as one of their top-10 stock holdings.

And this week we learned that construction machinery giant Caterpillar has now reported global sales declines for 34 consecutive months. The following comes from Zero Hedge…

Most cats bounce at least once when they die, but not this one: after CAT posted its first annual drop in retail sales in December of 2012, it has failed to see a rise in retail sales even once.

In fact, since then Caterpillar has seen 34 consecutive months of declining global sales, and 11 consecutive months of double digit declines!

Those that assume that everything is going to be “just fine” now that we have gotten past September are going to be dead wrong.

Whether it happens in November or not, the kind of chaotic financial collapse that Bo Polny is warning about will happen.

And of course factors that he is unable to account for such as war, terror attacks and major natural disasters could greatly accelerate things.

Once again, I don’t know if everything that Bo Polny is saying is going to turn out to be 100% accurate or not. I am just reporting what he is saying. But it is true that what he is forecasting fits very well with what I have been warning my readers about for months and months.

A day of reckoning is most definitely coming for global financial markets.

Will it happen in November?

Stay tuned…

During Every Market Crash There Are Big Ups, Big Downs And Giant Waves Of Momentum

August 25, 2015August 25, 2015 by Michael

This is exactly the type of market behavior that we would expect to see during the early stages of a major financial crisis. In every major market downturn throughout history there were big ups, big downs and giant waves of momentum, and this time around will not be any different. As I have explained repeatedly, markets tend to go up when things are calm, and they tend to go down when things get really choppy. During a market meltdown, we fully expect to see days when the stock market absolutely soars. Waves of panic selling are often followed by waves of panic buying. As you will see below, six of the ten best single day gains for the Dow Jones Industrial Average happened during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. So don’t be fooled for a moment by a very positive day for stocks like we are seeing on Tuesday. It is all part of the dance.

At one point on Tuesday, the Dow was up over 400 points, and many of the talking heads on television were proclaiming that the stock market had “recovered”. This is something that I predicted would happen yesterday…

And if stocks go up tomorrow (which they probably should), all of those same “experts” will be proclaiming that the “correction” is over and that everything is now fine.

No, everything is not “fine” now. The extreme volatility that we are witnessing just tells us that more trouble is coming. Early on Tuesday the market was “burning up energy” as short-term investors sought to “buy the dip”. But now that wave of panic buying is subsiding and the Dow is only up 240 points as I write this.

Overall, the Dow is still down more than 2,200 points from the peak of the market. Even though I specifically warned that a market crash was coming, I didn’t expect the Dow to be down this far in late August. Even after the “rally” we witnessed today, we are still way ahead of schedule.

The truth is that what we have seen so far is just the warm up act.

The main event will unfold during the months of September through December, and right now most people could not even conceive of the things that we are going to see in 2016.

But all along, there are going to be days when stocks fly higher. As I mentioned above, many of the “best days” in stock market history occurred right in the middle of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. This is a point that Jim Quinn has made very eloquently…

Six of the ten largest point gains in the history of the stock market occurred between September 2008 and March 2009. That’s right. During one of the greatest market collapses in history, the market soared by 5% to 11% in one day, six times. Here are the data points:

2008-10-13: +936.42

2008-10-28: +889.35

2008-11-13: +552.59

2009-03-23: +497.48

2008-11-21: +494.13

2008-09-30: +485.21

Do you think these factoids will be shared with the public today on the stock bubble networks? Not a chance.

And all of the technical indicators are still screaming that U.S. stocks have a long, long way to fall. For example, just check out this chart. The long-term analysis has not changed one bit.

Often, it is the short-term news that drives markets on any particular day. Tuesday began with another massive stock selloff in Asia…

The Shanghai Composite, China’s main stock exchange, fell 7.6% on Tuesday – after losing 8.5% on what state media have called China’s “Black Monday”.

It was the worst fall since 2007 and caused sharp drops in markets in the US and Europe

Tokyo’s Nikkei index had a volatile day, closing 4% lower.

In another desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, the Chinese decided to cut interest rates…

The People’s Bank of China has lowered its interest rate for the fifth time since November. The one-year lending has been reduced by 25 basis points to 4.6 percent; the one-year deposit rate has been cut by 25 basis points to 1.75 percent. The change comes into force on Wednesday.

This reduction in interest rates was cheered by investors all over the planet, and as a result there was a wave of panic buying in Europe and in the United States.

But none of the short-term activity changes the fact that global financial markets are absolutely primed for a giant crash. I like how Bill Fleckenstein put it during a recent interview with King World News…

I have no idea how this is going to play out, other than I know we are headed considerably lower. The fact that so few seem to understand what the actual problem is makes me even more confident about that point. It would seem that everyone is using the easy answer and blaming China, but that was just the catalyst. The market has been trading in a heavy sideways fashion for some time, expectations are way higher than can be met, the technical action has now deteriorated, and bad news actually matters at the same time that speculation has run rampant. As I have stated many times (and also noted the reasons why), you couldn’t create a more crash-prone environment if you specifically set out to do so.

What we can’t account for are “black swan events” which could greatly accelerate this financial crisis.

A war in the Middle East, a major natural disaster or a terror attack involving weapons of mass destruction are all examples of the kinds of things that could turn this market crash into full-blown market implosion.

As we move into the critical month of September 2015, I think that it is safe to say that we should all be ready to expect the unexpected. Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and I am extremely concerned about the period of time that we are heading into.

The nice, comfortable period of relative stability that we have been experiencing for the past few years has come to an end. I hope that you have enjoyed the good times while you still had them.

Now we are moving into a time of tremendous chaos and rapidly shifting conditions, and it is imperative that we all work very hard to get prepared for it while we still can.

Why Are So Many People Freaking Out About A Stock Market Crash In The Fall Of 2015?

August 19, 2015August 19, 2015 by Michael

Is the stock market going to crash by the end of 2015? Of course stock market crashes are already happening in 23 different nations around the planet, but most Americans don’t really care about those markets. The truth is that what matters to people in this country is the health of their own stock portfolios and retirement accounts. There are a lot of people out there that are very afraid of what could happen if the money that they have worked so hard to save gets wiped out in a sudden financial collapse. And right now there is an unprecedented amount of buzz about the potential for a giant stock market crash by the end of this calendar year. In fact, I don’t think that I have ever seen more experts come out with bold predictions that a stock market crash will happen within a very specific period of time.

The following is a sampling of some of the experts that have made very bold proclamations about the rest of this year over the past few weeks. Many of these individuals are putting their credibility on the line by proclaiming that a stock market crash is just around the corner…

-Tom McClellan says that we are heading for an “ugly decline” and that there will be “nothing good for bulls for the rest of the year”…

Tom McClellan loves doing what financial advisers tell you not to do. He tries to time the financial markets — to the exact day, if his charts align just right.

At the moment, they are telling him to be bullish on the stock market for all of his trading time frames, including those that trade every few days, weeks and months. But bulls should be ready to flee, as soon as this week.

That’s because McClellan said his timing models suggest “THE” top in stocks will be hit some time between Aug. 20 and Aug. 26. He expects “nothing good for the bulls for the rest of the year,” he said in a phone interview with MarketWatch.

McClellan doesn’t have a strong view on how far stocks could fall, just that it will probably be an “ugly decline” lasting into early 2016.

-Harry Dent recently stated that we are just “weeks away” from a “global financial collapse“.

-Gerald Celente says that “the global economy has collapsed” and he is “predicting that we are going to see a global stock market crash before the end of the year“.

-Larry Edelson insists that he is “100% confident” that a global financial crisis will be triggered “within the next few months”…

“On October 7, 2015, the first economic supercycle since 1929 will trigger a global financial crisis of epic proportions. It will bring Europe, Japan and the United States to their knees, sending nearly one billion human beings on a roller-coaster ride through hell for the next five years. A ride like no generation has ever seen. I am 100% confident it will hit within the next few months.”

-Jeff Berwick, the editor of the Dollar Vigilante, says that there is “enough going on in September to have me incredibly curious and concerned about what’s going to happen“.

-Egon von Greyerz recently explained that he fears “that this coming September – October all hell will break loose in the world economy and markets“.

-Even the mainstream media is issuing ominous warnings now. Just a few days ago, one of the most important newspapers in the entire world published a major story about the coming crisis under this headline: “Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control“.

-The Bank for International Settlements and the IMF have jumped on the prediction bandwagon as well. The following comes from a recent piece by Brandon Smith…

The BIS warns that the world is currently defenseless against the next market crisis. I would point out that the BIS has a record of predicting economic crashes, including back in 2007 just before the derivatives and credit crisis began. This ability to foresee fiscal disasters is far more likely due to the fact that the BIS is the dominant force in global central banking and is the cause of crisis, rather than merely a predictor of crisis. That is to say, it is easy to predict disasters you yourself are about to initiate.

It is no mistake that the warnings from the BIS and the IMF tend to come too little too late, or that they are beginning to compose cautionary press releases today that sound much like what alternative analysts were saying a few years ago. The goal of these globalist organizations is not to help people prepare, only to set themselves up as Johnny-come-lately prognosticators so that after a collapse they can claim they warned us all, which can then be used as a rationalization for why they are the best people to administrate the economies of the planet as a whole.

So why are so many prominent voices now warning that a global financial crisis is imminent?

The answer is actually very simple.

A global financial crisis is imminent.

Back on June 25th, I issued a red alert for the last six months of 2015 before any of these other guys issued their warnings.

When I first issued my alert, things were still seemingly very calm in the financial world, and a lot of people out there thought that I was nuts.

Well, here we are just a couple of months later and all hell is breaking loose. 23 global stock markets are crashing, the price of oil has been imploding, a new currency war has erupted, industrial commodities are plunging just like they did prior to the market crash of 2008, a full-blown financial crisis has gripped South America with fear, and junk bonds are sending some very ominous signals.

In the U.S., things are beginning to slowly unravel. The Dow was down another 162 points on Wednesday, and overall we are now down almost 1000 points from the peak of the market. At this point, it isn’t going to take much to push us into a bear market.

So enjoy what is left of August.

September is right around the corner, and if the experts that I mentioned above are correct, then it is likely to be one wild month.

If History Is Any Indication, Junk Bonds And Copper Are Telling Us Exactly Where Stocks Are Heading Next

August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 by Michael

Yields on the riskiest junk bonds are absolutely soaring and the price of copper just hit a fresh six year low. To most people, those pieces of financial news are meaningless. But if you understand history, and you are aware of the patterns that immediately preceded previous stock market crashes, then you know how how huge both of those signs are. During the summer of 2008, junk bond prices absolutely cratered as junk bond yields skyrocketed. This was a very clear signal that financial markets were about to crash, and sure enough a couple of months later it happened. Now the exact same thing is happening again. The following comes from a Wall Street On Parade article that was posted on Tuesday entitled “Keep Your Eye on Junk Bonds: They’re Starting to Behave Like ‘08“…

According to data from Bloomberg, corporations have issued a stunning $9.3 trillion in bonds since the beginning of 2009. The major beneficiary of this debt binge has been the stock market rather than investment in modernizing the plant, equipment or new hires to make the company more competitive for the future. Bond proceeds frequently ended up buying back shares or boosting dividends, thus elevating the stock market on the back of heavier debt levels on corporate balance sheets.

Now, with commodity prices resuming their plunge and currency wars spreading, concerns of financial contagion are back in the markets and spreads on corporate bonds versus safer, more liquid instruments like U.S. Treasury notes, are widening in a fashion similar to the warning signs heading into the 2008 crash. The $2.2 trillion junk bond market (high-yield) as well as the investment grade market have seen spreads widen as outflows from Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and bond funds pick up steam.

And right now we are seeing the most volatility in the junkiest of the junk bonds.

The following comes from Wolf Richter, and my jaw just about dropped to the floor when I first saw this…

This chart of yields at the riskiest end of the junk bond market – bonds rated CCC and below – shows what happened. These bonds have been selling off over the past 12 months, with exception of the sucker rally earlier this year, and their yields more than doubled from less than 7.9% in June a year ago to 16.2% by Thursday evening. And Thursday was a massacre:

On Thursday, yields jumped 2.6 percentage points, from 13.58% to 16.18%, as these junk bonds plunged. Those kinds of single-day vertigo-inducing sell-offs are rare in normal times, and there haven’t been any since the Financial Crisis.

Amazingly, the Federal Reserve is actually thinking about raising interest rates in this environment.

If that sounds like a really bad idea to you, that is because it is a really bad idea.

Raising interest rates would just add fuel to the fire of this junk bond rout. DoubleLine Capital’s co-founder Jeffrey Gundlach agrees with me…

“To raise interest rates when junk bonds are nearly at a four-year low is a bad idea,” Gundlach said in a telephone interview.

Gundlach, widely followed for his prescient investment calls, said if the Fed begins raising interest rates in September, “it opens the lid on Pandora’s Box of a tightening cycle.”

Gundlach said the selling pressure in copper and commodity prices driven by worries over China’s growth outlook “should be a huge concern. It is the second-biggest economy in the world.”

Meanwhile, as Gundlach mentioned, the price of copper continues to plunge.

On Tuesday, it set a brand new six year low. It is now the lowest that it has been since the days of the last financial crisis.

And as you can see from this excerpt from a recent Investment Research Dynamics article, the price of copper started crashing before the stock market crash of 2008…

I wanted to keep this simple and just look at what is considered perhaps the best barometer of global economic activity:

You’ll note that the price of copper is headed lower and is back to the price level where it was in the middle of 2008, right before the great financial collapse. You’ll note that $3.6 trillion in Federal Reserve money printing – on top of trillions in Bank of Japan, ECB and People’s Bank of China money printing – has not been able to keep the price of copper from crashing again.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, the global financial system is in real trouble.

Another sign that rough waters are ahead is the fact that global shipping has fallen into a dramatic slump. The following comes from the Telegraph…

World shipping has fallen into a deep slump over the late summer, dashing hopes of a quick recovery from the global trade recession earlier this year and heightening fears that the six-year economic expansion may be on its last legs.

Freight rates for container shipping from Asia to Europe fell by over 20pc in the second week of August, even though trade volumes should be picking up at this time of the year. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) for routes to north European ports crashed by 23pc in five trading days.

Global economic activity is clearly slowing down, and there are 23 nations around the planet that are already experiencing stock market crashes.

The financial markets of the western world have not totally crashed just yet, but they are more leveraged and more vulnerable than ever. The following comes from Zero Hedge…

The REAL problem for the financial system is the bond bubble. In 2008 when the crisis hit it was $80 trillion. It has since grown to over $100 trillion.
The derivatives market that uses this bond bubble as collateral is over $555 trillion in size.
Many of the large multinational corporations, sovereign governments, and even municipalities have used derivatives to fake earnings and hide debt. NO ONE knows to what degree this has been the case, but given that 20% of corporate CFOs have admitted to faking earnings in the past, it’s likely a significant amount.
Corporations today are more leveraged than they were in 2007. As Stanley Druckenmiller noted recently, in 2007 corporate bonds were $3.5 trillion… today they are $7 trillion: an amount equal to nearly 50% of US GDP.
The Central Banks are now all leveraged at levels greater than or equal to where Lehman Brothers was when it imploded. The Fed is leveraged at 78 to 1. The ECB is leveraged at over 26 to 1. Lehman Brothers was leveraged at 30 to 1.
The Central Banks have no idea how to exit their strategies. Fed minutes released from 2009 show Janet Yellen was worried about how to exit when the Fed’s balance sheet was $1.3 trillion (back in 2009). Today it’s over $4.5 trillion.

As I explained during a recent interview with Kate Dalley of Fox News radio, what is coming should be obvious to anyone that is willing to look at the numbers honestly.

The global financial system is going to crash.

Yes, this crisis is going to take years to fully play out, but by the time it is all said and done it is going to be much worse than what we experienced back in 2008 and 2009.

So buckle up tight and hold on for your life, because we are in for one wild ride.

Now Is The Time – Fear Rises As Financial Markets All Over The Planet Start To Crash

July 27, 2015July 27, 2015 by Michael

Can you feel the panic in the air? CNN Money’s Fear & Greed Index measures the amount of fear in the financial world on a scale from 0 to 100. The closer it is to zero, the higher the level of fear. Last Monday, the index was sitting at a reading of 36. As I write this article, it has fallen to 7. The financial turmoil which began last week is threatening to turn into an avalanche. On Sunday night, we witnessed the second largest one day stock market collapse in China ever, and this pushed stocks all over the planet into the red. Meanwhile, the twin blades of an emerging market currency crisis and a commodity price crash are chewing up economies that are dependent on the export of natural resources all over the globe. For a long time, I have been warning about what would happen in the second half of 2015, and now it is here. The following is a summary of the financial carnage that we have seen over the past 24 hours…

-On Sunday night, the Shanghai Composite Index plunged 8.5 percent. It was the largest one day stock market crash in China since 2007, and it was the second largest in history. The Chinese government is promising to directly intervene in order to prevent Chinese stocks from going down even more.

-Over 1,500 stocks in China fell by their 10 percent daily maximum. This list includes giants such as China Unicom, Bank of Communications and PetroChina.

-Ever since peaking in June, the Shanghai Composite Index has dropped by a total of 28 percent.

-Even Chinese stocks that are listed on U.S. stock exchanges are being absolutely hammered. The following comes from USA Today…

The 144 China-based stocks with primary listings on major U.S. exchanges have erased nearly $40 billion in paper wealth since the Shanghai Composite index peaked on June 12. It’s an enormous destruction of wealth that in effects wipes out the market value of a company the size of cruise ship operator Carnival.

-The Chinese stock market crash pushed European stocks significantly lower on Monday…

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 provisionally closed 2.1 percent lower, while the Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC closed respectively 2.4 percent and 2.5 percent lower.

The U.K.’s benchmark FTSE outperformed its euro zone peers, but still closed unofficially down 1.0 percent.

-Overall, European stocks have been falling steadily since the beginning of last week. To get an idea of how much damage has been done already, just check out this chart.

-As I mentioned above, an emerging market currency crisis is causing havoc for economies all over the planet. The following comes from an article that was published by the Telegraph…

The currencies of Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey have all crashed to multi-year lows as investors flee emerging markets and commodity prices crumble.

The drastic moves came as fears of imminent monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve combined with shockingly weak figures from China, which stoked fears that the country may be sliding into a deeper downturn and sent tremors through East Asia, Latin America and Africa.

-The government of Puerto Rico has announced that it does not have enough cash to make a scheduled debt payment of 169 million dollars on August 1st. The Obama administration says that there are no plans in the works to bail out Puerto Rico.

-On Monday, the Dow was down another 127 points. It was the fifth day in a row that the Dow and the S&P 500 have both declined.

-Overall, the Dow is now down more than 650 points since July 20th.

-480 stocks on the New York Stock Exchange have hit new 52-week lows. Many analysts consider this to be a very, very ominous sign.

-I have repeatedly written about the danger of the commodity collapse that we are currently witnessing, and the Bloomberg Commodity Index fell another 1.22 percent on Monday to a fresh low of 92.1493.

-On Monday, the price of U.S. oil hit a 52-week low of $46.92.

-So far, the price of U.S. oil has fallen about 20 percent this month.

-Back in June 2014, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude was above 107 dollars. Since then, the price of U.S. oil has fallen an astounding 56 percent.

-Thanks in large part to the collapse in energy prices, junk bonds are cratering. This is something that happened just before the financial crisis of 2008, and now it is happening again. The following comes from Wolf Street…

Among the bonds: Cliffs Natural Resources down 27.6%, SandBridge down 30%, Murray Energy down 21.2%, and Linn Energy down 22.3%, according to Bloomberg.

For example, Linn Energy 6.25% notes due in 2019 were trading at 78 cents on the dollar at the beginning of July and at 58 on Friday, according to LCD. There was bloodshed beyond energy, such as AK Steel’s 7.625% notes due in 2021. They were trading at 62 cents on the dollar, down 22% from the beginning of July.

“The performance is a disappointment to investors who purchased about $40 billion of junk-rated bonds from energy companies this year, thinking that the worst of the slump was over,” Bloomberg noted.

This is exactly what we would expect to see during the early stages of a financial crisis.

Of course global financial markets may bounce back somewhat tomorrow. If you will remember, some of the largest one day gains in stock market history happened right in the middle of the stock market collapse of 2008. So don’t get fooled by what happens on any one particular day.

With so much fear in the air, literally anything could happen in the weeks and months ahead of us. One month ago, I issued a red alert for the last six months of this year. I warned that a major financial crisis was imminent and that people needed to start protecting themselves immediately.

As I write this article on Monday evening, financial markets are already opening up over in Asia. Japanese stocks are already down 251 points even though the market has only been open for about an hour over there.

We have entered a time when what is happening to global stock markets will once again be headline news. We are right on the precipice of another great financial crisis, only this one is going to ultimately end up being much worse than the last one.

Now is the time.

Please get prepared while you still can.

The Stock Market Will Start To Fall In July? The Dow Plummeted More Than 500 Points Last Week

July 26, 2015July 26, 2015 by Michael

Was last week a preview of things to come? There are quite a few people out there that believe that the stock market would begin to decline in July, and that appears to be precisely what is happening. Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 530 points. It was the biggest one week decline that we have seen so far in 2015, and some are suggesting that this could only be just the beginning. By just about any measurement that you might want to use, the stock market is overvalued. But we have been in this bubble for so long that many people have come to believe that this is “the new normal”. In fact, earlier today someone that I know dropped me a line and suggested that our financial overlords may be able to use the tools at their disposal to get this current bubble to persist indefinitely. Unfortunately, the truth is that no financial bubble ever lasts forever, and right now some very alarming things are starting to happen behind the scenes. Over the past couple of weeks, the smart money has been dumping stocks like crazy, and the lack of liquidity in the bond markets is beginning to become acute. Could it be possible that another great financial crisis is just around the corner?

Last week took a lot of investors by surprise. The following is how Zero Hedge summarized the carnage…

-Russell 2000 -3.1% – worst week since Oct 2014 (Bullard)
-Dow -2.8% – worst week since Dec 2014
-S&P -2.1% – worst week since Jan 2015
-Trannies -2.8% – worst week since Mar 2015
-Nasdaq -2.2% – worst week since Mar 2015

The talking heads on television were not quite sure what to make of this sudden downturn. On CNBC, analysts mainly blamed the usual suspects…

“I think the market’s very much concerned about the commodity (decline),” said John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s. “The contraction in China manufacturing activity is gaining momentum and the credit market has yet to signal that rates are not about to go higher.”

He also noted a surprising decline in new home sales and continued lack of revenue growth in earnings. Nearly all the commodities are in a bear market and gold and crude settled at lows Friday.

“You’ve got some major growth concerns and that is what’s weighing on investors minds,” said Peter Boockvar, chief market strategist at The Lindsey Group.

And without a doubt, there are some new numbers that are deeply troubling for Wall Street. For example, it is being projected that S&P 500 companies will collectively report a 2.2 percent decline in earnings for the second quarter of 2015. If this comes to pass, it will be the first drop that we have seen since the third quarter of 2012.

The biggest reason for this decline in earnings is the implosion of U.S. energy companies due to the crash in oil prices. The following comes from CNBC…

Thanks to a collapse in the price of oil, the energy sector is slated to report a monster 54 percent drop in earnings and 28 percent swoon in revenue, compared to the second quarter in the year prior.

Hmm – unlike what so many others were saying initially, it turns out that the oil crash is bad for the U.S. economy after all.

But just like at this time of the year in 2008, most people fully expect that everything is going to be just fine. So many of the exact same patterns that we witnessed the last time around are playing out once again, and yet most of the “experts” refuse to see what is happening right in front of their eyes.

When things crash this time, it won’t just be stocks that collapse. As I have been writing about so frequently, we are also headed for an implosion of the bond markets as well. The following comes from Dr. David Eifrig…

In the U.S. Treasury securities market, financial-services giant JPMorgan Chase estimates that five years ago, you could move about $280 million worth of Treasury securities before your trades moved the market’s price. Now, that’s down to $80 million… a decline of more than 70%.

When a panic sets in, reduced liquidity can cause big swings in market prices.

There is that word “liquidity” again. This is something that I have repeatedly been taking about. Just check out this article from a little over a month ago. A bond is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it, and if the market runs out of buyers that can cause seismic shifts in price very rapidly. Here is more from Eifrig…

In a run-of-the-mill bear market, you just have a downward trend… When enough investors are selling bonds, it drives down prices. Falling prices lead more investors to start selling. We see that all the time.

A liquidity crisis goes even further. It’s like a classic run on a bank… Without sufficient liquidity, the sellers don’t just see lower prices… they see no prices. Since no one wants to buy bonds at this particular time, the price for them effectively becomes zero.

There has been a lot of speculation about what will happen in the second half of 2015.

We only have a little over five months to go in the year, so it won’t be too long before we see who was right and who was wrong.

Our perceptions of the future are very much shaped by our worldviews. All the time, I get “Obamabots” that come to my website and leave comments on my articles telling me how Barack Obama has “turned the economy around” and has set the stage for a new era of prosperity in America.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they choose to believe that things are in great shape because that is what they want to believe. Just check out the results from one recent survey…

While 55 percent of Democrats reported feeling positive about the economy, for example, just 25 percent of Republicans felt the same from March 25 to May 27.

When asked if they thought the economy would improve over the next 12 months, 53 percent of Democrats said yes. Only 23 percent of the Republicans in the survey agreed.

The same perception gap extends to the far future, with 41 percent of Democrats believing that the next generation will be better off than their parents, and just 24 percent of Republicans saying the same.

To me, those numbers are quite striking.

Many Democrats very much want to believe that things are getting better because Barack Obama is in the White House.

Many Republicans very much want to believe that things are totally falling apart because Barack Obama is in the White House.

So who is right and who is wrong?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

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