Stock Market

September 2015 Sure Started Off With Quite A Bang, Eh?

September 1, 2015September 1, 2015 by Michael

After enduring their worst August in 17 years, U.S. stocks are off to their worst start to a September in 13 years. Just yesterday, I declared that we would be entering the “danger zone” this month, and it didn’t take long for the action to begin. Historically, this month is the worst month of the year for stocks, and most of the biggest stock market crashes throughout our history have come in the fall. On Tuesday, the Dow plunged another 469 points, and it is now down more than 10 percent from the peak of the market back in May. That means that we have officially entered “correction” territory. Asian stocks also crashed hard on Tuesday, so did European stocks, and the price of oil plummeted about 8 percent. For a long time, there have been a lot of people out there that have been warning that a financial crisis would happen in the second half of 2015, and they are being proven right. It is actually happening.

Of course there will be plenty of ups and downs still to come. I cannot emphasize enough that we should fully expect waves of panic selling and waves of panic buying. This always happens during any market crash.

For instance, just consider what happened when the tech bubble crashed. The following analysis comes from Graham Summers…

In a six month period, investors moved stocks down 19%, up 8%, then down 27%, then up 21%, then down 22%, then up 34%, then down 17%, then up 16%, then down 28%, then up 16%, and finally down 17%. Only at that point did stocks break their trendline for the bubble (the blue line) and it became obvious that the bubble had burst.

My point with all of this is that even when the bubble was both very specific AND obvious, the collapse was neither quick nor clean. There were several large 20%+ crashes, but overall, it was a roller coaster with jarring rallies that gradually wore its way down.

It was a full-blown market collapse, and yet there were moments when the market absolutely skyrocketed.

The same thing happened in 2008. In fact, the best two days in stock market history were right in the middle of the last financial crisis.

So don’t be fooled by what happens on any one particular day. Huge up days and huge down days are both red flags.

If the market is going to recover any time soon, what we need are nice quiet days without much volatility. Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen any time soon because a tremendous amount of damage has already been done and some massive imbalances have already developed. I like how Richard Smith put it recently…

Serious damage has been done to the financial markets in the past two weeks – very serious. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

No one should be kidding themselves that what’s happened in the past two weeks is just a little late summer blip – building up some energy to rally into the fall and winter. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen but it isn’t the odds play.

Everywhere I look, technical damage has been done – and it’s like nothing we’ve seen since 2008.

Yes, the mainstream media is telling everyone that they shouldn’t panic and that everything will be just fine, but those that study the charts for a living know what is really happening. For months, I have been telling you over and over that things were setting up in textbook fashion for another financial crisis, and other experts have been seeing the exact same things that I have been seeing. For example, just consider what Louise Yamada told CNBC…

Looking at a chart of the S&P 500, Louise Yamada noted that momentum has been declining for four months, which by her work, is a “classic” sell signal.

“This is suggesting to me that we are looking at a bear market,” said Yamada said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” Yamada noted that the last two times the market saw a similar shift in momentum were in January 2008 and June 2000.

Right now, a lot of people are very confused about what to do. Those that told them to buy stocks in the first place are telling them to buy even more stocks. And of course the mainstream media is telling them that everything is going to be just wonderful after this “correction” runs its course. But at the same time a lot of people have a gut feeling that things are about to get really bad.

Personally, I think that what John Hussman shared in his recent newsletter contains a lot of wisdom…

“If you’re taking more equity risk than you can actually tolerate if the market goes south, setting your portfolio right isn’t a market call – it’s just sound financial planning. It’s only fun to be reckless if you also turn out to be lucky. Market conditions are now more hostile than at any time since the 2007 peak. If you want to be speculating, and you can tolerate the outcome, then you’re not taking too much equity risk in the first place. But it’s one or the other. Can you tolerate a 40-55% market loss over the next 18 months or so? If not, take this opportunity to set things right. That’s not the worst-case scenario under present conditions; it’s actually the run-of-the-mill historical expectation.”

I also want to point out that we are now less than two weeks away from the end of the Shemitah year.

If you are still not familiar with the concept of the Shemitah year, please see my previous article entitled “The Shemitah: The Biblical Pattern Which Indicates That A Financial Collapse May Be Coming In 2015“.

Even though the stock market crashed in September 2001 at the end of a Shemitah year, and in September 2008 at the end of another Shemitah year, and it is crashing again in September 2015, somehow there are still people out there that do not think that this is real.

Well, I am here to tell you that this is very real. But if you won’t listen to me, perhaps you will consider the findings of Israeli mathematician Thomas Pound. The following comes from an outstanding piece that was just published by WND…

After a friend told him about the seven-year Sabbatical cycle to the stock market, Pound again set out to see if the theory held up under statistical scrutiny.

Applying the same ANOVA test to the Shemitah cycle, Pound’s research revealed that the sabbatical years were the only group of years in which the market cycle averages consistent significant losses since 1871.

He also found that, in Shemitah years, the difference in loss was greater than that noted in professor Shiller’s decennial cycle.

“Statistically, it appears that the calendar years in which the Sabbatical year ends are worse than the other six years, and that difference is significant based on the data I have,” Pound told Breaking Israel News.

Look, I know that this may not fit with how you currently view the world.

The truth is that a whole bunch of weird stuff is about to happen that may not fit with how you currently view the world.

But if you honestly want to discover the truth, then you have got to go wherever the evidence ultimately leads you.

So what do you think about all of this? Please feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…

CNN Tells Americans That The Stock Market Is Not Going To Crash

August 26, 2015August 26, 2015 by Michael

On Wednesday we witnessed the third largest single day point gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ever. That sounds like great news until you realize that the two largest were in October 2008 – right in the middle of the last financial crisis. This is a perfect example of what I wrote about yesterday. Every time the market crashes, there are huge up days, huge down days and giant waves of market momentum. Even though the Dow was up 619 points on Wednesday, overall we are still down more than 2,000 points from the peak of the market. During the weeks and months to come, we are going to see many more wild market swings, but the overall direction of the market will be down.

Sadly, the mainstream media is still peddling the lie that everything is going to be just fine. So millions upon and millions of Americans are just going to sit there while their investments get wiped out. In the six trading days leading up to Wednesday, Americans lost a staggering 2.1 trillion dollars as stocks plunged, and the truth is that this nightmare is only just beginning.

Early on Wednesday morning, CNN published an article entitled “Why U.S. stocks aren’t headed for a crash“. I had to laugh when I saw that headline. If CNN is going to make this kind of a claim, they better have something very solid to base it on. But instead, these are the five reasons we were given for why the stock market is not going to collapse…

1. “The U.S. economy isn’t on the verge of a recession.”

This is exactly what all of the “experts” told us back in 2007 and 2008 too. In America today, the homeownership rate is at a 48 year low, 46 million Americans go to food banks, and economic growth has slowed to a standstill (and that is if you actually buy the highly manipulated official numbers). The truth, of course, is that things continue to progressively get worse as our long-term economic decline continues to unfold. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “12 Ways The Economy Is Already In Worse Shape Than It Was During The Depths Of The Last Recession“.

2. “China’s effect on U.S. is limited.”

Really? Go to just about any major retail store and start reading labels. You will likely find far more things that were “made in China” than you will American-made products. The global economy is more interconnected than ever before, and the Chinese stock market is the second largest on the entire planet. Of course what is happening in China is going to affect us.

3. “American businesses are doing pretty well (outside of energy).”

Actually, they were doing pretty well for a while, but now things are turning. Many large corporations are reporting declining orders, declining revenues and declining profits. Unsold inventories are beginning to pile up and the pace of layoffs is starting to increase. All of the things that we would expect to see just prior to another recession are happening.

4. “The Federal Reserve sounds cautious.”

This is laughable. Ultimately, it isn’t going to matter much at all whether the Federal Reserve barely raises rates or not. The era of “central bank omnipotence” is at an end. Just look at what is happening over in Europe. All of the quantitative easing that the ECB has been doing has not kept their markets from crashing in recent days. Those that believe that the Federal Reserve can somehow miraculously keep the stock market from crashing this time around are going to end up deeply, deeply disappointed.

5. “Stock prices aren’t crazy high anymore.”

There is some truth to this last point. Instead of stock prices being really, really, really crazy now they are just really, really crazy. But as I have pointed out in many previous articles, the technical indicators are very clearly telling us that U.S. stocks still have a long, long way to go down.

But let’s hope that CNN is actually right – at least in the short-term.

Let’s hope that markets settle down and that things stabilize for at least a few weeks.

In order for that to happen, markets need to become a lot less volatile than they are right now. The rollercoaster ride that we have been on in recent days has been extraordinary…

The Dow traveled another 1,600 points during Tuesday’s trading session, adding to the 4,900 points the index traveled in down and up moves on Monday.

Markets tend to go up slowly and steadily when things are calm, and they tend to go down rapidly when things are volatile.

If you are rooting for a return of the bull market, you should be hoping for nice, boring trading days where the Dow goes up by about 100 points or so. Wild swings like we have seen on Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are very strong indicators that we have entered a bear market.

What we have been witnessing over the past week is almost unprecedented. Just check out this piece of analysis from Bloomberg…

By one metric, investors would have to go back 75 years to find the last time the S&P 500’s losses were this abrupt.

Bespoke Investment Group observed that the S&P 500 has closed more than four standard deviations below its 50-day moving average for the third consecutive session. That’s only the second time this has happened in the history of the index.

Of course after such a dramatic plunge it was inevitable that we were going to have a “bounce back day” where there was lots of panic buying. Initially it looked like it would be Tuesday, but it turned out to be Wednesday instead.

But if you think that the big gain on Wednesday somehow means that the crisis is “over”, you are going to be sorely mistaken.

Personally, I am hoping that we at least see a bit of a pause in the action, but there is absolutely no guarantee that we will even get that.

As the markets have been flying around, more and more Americans are becoming curious about the potential for a full-blown stock market crash. The following comes from Business Insider…

This one’s pretty easy: according to Google search trends, more Americans are searching for “stock market crash” now that at any point since the last crash.

Right now, search traffic for the term “stock market crash” is hitting about 70% of the most volume this term has ever gotten through Google search.

And so while this data doesn’t convey absolute search volume for the term, we do know that Americans appear to be looking for information about a stock market crash at the highest level in about 7 years.

Very interesting.

In addition, Americans are also becoming more pessimistic about the overall economy. According to Gallup, the level of confidence that Americans have about the future performance of the U.S. economy is the lowest that it has been in about a year.

And remember – it isn’t just U.S. markets that are starting to go crazy. All over the planet stocks are crashing and recessions are starting. In fact, I can’t remember a time when there has been this much economic chaos erupting all over the world all at once.

So can the U.S. resist the overall trend and pull out of this market crash?

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

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.

We Have Already Witnessed The First 1300 Points Of The Stock Market Crash Of 2015

August 20, 2015August 20, 2015 by Michael

What has been happening on Wall Street the past few days has been nothing short of stunning. On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 358 points. It was the largest single day decline in a year and a half, and investors are starting to panic. Overall, the Dow is now down more than 1300 points from the peak of the market. Just yesterday, I wrote about all of the experts that are warning about a stock market crash in 2015, and after today I am sure that a lot more people will start jumping on the bandwagon. In particular, tech stocks are getting absolutely hammered lately. The Nasdaq has fallen close to 3.5% over the past two days alone, and it has dropped below its 200-day moving average. The Russell 2000 (a small-cap stock market index) is also now trading below its 200-day moving average. What all of this means is that the stock market crash of 2015 has already begun. The only question left to answer at this point is how bad it will ultimately turn out to be.

When stocks were booming, tech stocks were leading the way up.

But now that the market has turned, tech stocks are starting to lead the way down…

The Dow and the S&P 500 are negative for the year. The so-called “FANG” stocks – Facebook, Apple, Netflix, and Google – were some of the biggest losers, and helped send the Nasdaq more than 2% lower. Biotechs also suffered big losses; the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF fell 4% to a three-month low. The Vix, which gauges market expectations for near-term shifts in the S&P 500, surged more than 21%.

And Twitter is absolutely imploding. It has fallen below its IPO price, and at this point it is now down 65 percent from the peak.

Of course it was inevitable that Twitter and these tech stocks would start falling eventually. I specifically warned my readers about Twitter’s stock price nearly two years ago. I hope people listened to what I was saying and got out in time.

This current market crash is happening in the context of a full-blown global financial meltdown. Stock markets all over the planet are collapsing, and currencies are being devalued left and right. The following comes from a recent piece by Wolf Richter…

Hot money is already fleeing emerging markets. Higher rates in the US will drain more capital out of countries that need it the most. It will pressure emerging market currencies and further increase the likelihood of a debt crisis in countries whose governments, banks, and corporations borrow in a currency other than their own.

This scenario would be bad enough for the emerging economies. But now China has devalued the yuan to stimulate its exports and thus its economy at the expense of others. And one thing has become clear on Wednesday: these struggling economies that compete with China are going to protect their exports against Chinese encroachment.

Hence a currency war.

Two more major shots in the currency war were fired on Thursday by Kazakhstan and Vietnam…

Hit by sharp declines in crude prices, the oil-producing nation of Kazakhstan introduced a freely floating exchange rate for the tenge, which subsequently lost more than a quarter of its value.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) devalued the dong (VND) by 1 percent against the dollar on Wednesday—its third adjustment so far this year—and simultaneously widened the trading band to 3 percent from 2 percent previously, the second increase in six days.

A quarter of its value?

Now that is a devaluation.

In the coming days, we are likely to see even more emerging markets devalue their currencies in a global “race to the bottom”. But this “race to the bottom” presents a great danger to financial markets. As I have written about previously, there are 74 trillion dollars in derivatives globally that are tied to the value of currencies. As foreign exchange rates start flying around all over the place, there are going to be financial institutions out there that are going to be losing obscene amounts of money.

I cannot say the “d word” enough. Derivatives are going to play a starring role during this financial collapse, and so that is a word that you will want to be listening for very carefully in the weeks and months to come.

The meltdown that has already been affecting much of the rest of the planet is now starting to affect us. And it was inevitable that it would. I like how Clive P. Maund put it recently…

Many lesser markets around the world are toppling, but somehow the big Western markets of Europe, Japan and the US are staying aloft. If you have ever made a sand castle on the beach and watched what happened when the tide comes in, you will recall that it is the weaker outer ramparts and smaller turrets that collapse first, and the big central towers that hold out the longest. The weaker outer ramparts and smaller turrets are the Emerging Markets which are already crumbling, and it won’t be long until the big central towers – the big Western Markets, go the same way – everything is pointing to it.

The funny thing is that even though all of the signs are pointing to a nightmarish global financial crisis, the mainstream media continues to insist that everything is going to be just fine.

In fact, CNBC says that the recent dip in stock prices is a “bull indicator” and they are encouraging everyone to pour lots more money into stocks.

But of course the truth is that what financial conditions are really telling us is that stocks have much, much farther to fall.

For instance, high yield credit is starting to crash just like it did prior to the stock market crash of 2008. Stocks and high yield credit usually tend to track one another quite closely, and so when there is a divergence that is a huge red flag. And as this chart from Zero Hedge demonstrates, a very large divergence has developed in recent months…

Sadly, the 358 point plunge for the Dow on Thursday was just the beginning.

Yes, there will be up days and down days, but we are now officially entering the “danger zone” as we roll into the months of September and October.

So will 2015 soon be mentioned along with the famous market crashes of 1929, 1987, 2001 and 2008?

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

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.

23 Nations Around The World Where Stock Market Crashes Are Already Happening

August 17, 2015August 17, 2015 by Michael

You can stop waiting for a global financial crisis to happen. The truth is that one is happening right now. All over the world, stock markets are already crashing. Most of these stock market crashes are occurring in nations that are known as “emerging markets”. In recent years, developing countries in Asia, South America and Africa loaded up on lots of cheap loans that were denominated in U.S. dollars. But now that the U.S. dollar has been surging, those borrowers are finding that it takes much more of their own local currencies to service those loans. At the same time, prices are crashing for many of the commodities that those countries export. The exact same kind of double whammy caused the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s.

As you read this article, almost every single stock market in the world is down significantly from a record high that was set either earlier this year or late in 2014. But even though stocks have been sliding in the western world, they haven’t completely collapsed just yet.

In much of the developing world, it is a very different story. Emerging market currencies are crashing hard, recessions are starting, and equity prices are getting absolutely hammered.

Posted below is a list that I put together of 23 nations around the world where stock market crashes are already happening. To see the stock market chart for each country, just click the link…

1. Malaysia

2. Brazil

3. Egypt

4. China

5. Indonesia

6. South Korea

7. Turkey

8. Chile

9. Colombia

10. Peru

11. Bulgaria

12. Greece

13. Poland

14. Serbia

15. Slovenia

16. Ukraine

17. Ghana

18. Kenya

19. Morocco

20. Nigeria

21. Singapore

22. Taiwan

23. Thailand

Of course this is just the beginning. The western world is going to feel this kind of pain as well very soon. I want to share with you an excerpt from an article that just appeared in the Telegraph entitled “Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control“. You see, the Telegraph is not just one of the most important newspapers in the UK – it is truly one of the most important newspapers in the entire world. When it speaks on financial matters, millions of people listen very carefully. So for the Telegraph to declare that the countdown to a “global market crash” is “one minute to midnight” is a very, very big deal…

When the banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy room to heal.

Time is now rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost control and at the same time the global economy is grinding to a halt. It is only a matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty expectations and record valuations.

I encourage you to read the rest of that excellent article right here. It contains lots of charts and graphs, and it discusses many of the exact same things that I have been hammering on for months.

When one of the newspapers of record for the entire planet starts sounding exactly like The Economic Collapse Blog, then you know that it is late in the game.

Others are sounding the alarm about an imminent global financial crash as well. For example, just consider what Egon von Greyerz recently told King World News…

Eric, I fear that this coming September – October all hell will break loose in the world economy and markets. A lot of factors point to that, both fundamental and technical indicators and this indicates that we could have a number of shocks this autumn.

Sadly, most investors will hold stocks, bonds and property and will see any decline in value as an opportunity. It will be a long time and a very big fall before they realize that the system will not help them this time because the central bankers have run out of ammunition to save the global financial system one more time. Yes, we will see more massive money printing, but it will just make things worse. And at some stage, which could be quite soon, real fear will set in, a fear of a magnitude the world has not experienced before.

Hmm – there is another example of someone talking about September. It is funny how often that month keeps coming up.

And of course most of the major stock market crashes in U.S. history have been in the fall. Just go back and take a look at what happened in 1929, 1987, 2001 and 2008.

The “smart money” has been pulling their money out of stocks for quite a while now, and at this point a lot of others have hopped on the bandwagon. The following comes from CNBC…

The flight of investor money from U.S. stocks has turned into a stampede.

In fact, the $78.7 billion leaving domestic equity-focused funds has been worse in 2015 than it was even during the financial crisis years, when the S&P 500 tumbled some 60 percent, according to data released Friday by Morningstar. The total is the highest since 1993.

Domestic equity funds surrendered $20.4 billion in July alone and have seen $158.6 billion in redemptions over the past 12 months. Even a strong flow of money into passively managed exchange-traded funds has been unable to offset the stream to the exit among retail investors, who generally focus more on mutual funds than ETFs.

A global financial crisis has already begun.

So those that were claiming that one would not happen in 2015 are already wrong.

Over the coming months we will find out how bad it will ultimately be.

Sometimes I get criticized for talking about these things. There are a few people out there that don’t like all of the “doom and gloom” that I discuss on my website. Apparently it is a bad thing to talk about the things that really matter and we should all just be “keeping up with the Kardashians” instead.

I consider myself just to be another watchman on the wall. From our spots on the wall, watchmen such as myself all over the nation are sounding the alarm about what we clearly see coming.

If we saw what was coming and we did not warn the people, their blood would be on our hands. But if we do warn the people, then we have done our duty.

Every day I just do the best that I can with what I have been given. And there are many others just like me that are doing exactly the same thing.

Those that do not like the warning message are going to feel really stupid when things start falling apart all around them and they finally realize how wrong they truly were.

A Death Cross, Wild Market Swings And A Currency War – And We Haven’t Even Gotten To September Yet

August 12, 2015August 12, 2015 by Michael

Things continue to line up in textbook fashion for a major financial crisis by the end of 2015. This week, Wall Street has been buzzing about the first “death cross” that we have seen for the Dow since 2011. When the 50-day moving average moves below the 200-day moving average, that is a very important psychological moment for the market. And just like during the run up to the stock market crash of 2008, we are starting to witness lots of wild swings up and down. The Dow was up more than 200 points on Monday, the Dow was down more than 200 points on Tuesday, and it took a nearly 700 point roundtrip on Wednesday. This is exactly the type of behavior that we would expect to see during the weeks or months leading up to a crash. As any good sailor will tell you, when the waters start getting very choppy that is not a good sign. Of course what China is doing is certainly not helping matters. On Wednesday, the Chinese devalued the yuan for a second day in a row, and many believe that a new “currency war” has now begun.

So what does all of this mean?

Does this mean that the time of financial “shaking” has now arrived?

Let’s start with what is happening to the Dow. When the 50-day moving average crosses over the 200-day moving average, it is a very powerful signal. For example, as Business Insider has pointed out, if you would have got into stocks when the 50-day moving average moved above the 200-day moving average in December 2011, you would have experienced a gain of 43 percent by now…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been on an unrelenting upward trajectory since its October 2011 low.

The signal that convinced many traders that the market was now moving with a bullish bias was when the 50-day moving average of the index price rose above the 200-day moving average a couple of months later at the end of December.

Since then the market rallied 6,200 points to a high of 18,333 before pulling back to last night’s close of 17,404. That’s a gain of around 43% even though the market is 5% off its high.

But now a cross is happening in the other direction. That is why it is called a “death cross”. It is quite understandable why a lot of investors are freaking out about the fact that the 50-day moving average has moved below the 200-day moving average for the first time in four years. Every major stock market in history has been preceded by a death cross.

Of course no indicator is perfect. Sometimes these death crosses come just before market crashes, and other times nothing much seems to happen. The following comes from MarketWatch…

The 50-day moving average (or “MA”) crossed below a rising 200-day MA on July 7, 2010, when the Dow closed at 10,018.28. The Dow’s closing low for 2010 was actually hit two sessions earlier, at 9,686.48.

But the Dow fell another 5.9% over six weeks after the Aug. 24, 2011 death cross, and tumbled as much as 50% over 14 months after the one appearing on Jan. 3, 2008.

And keep in mind that when the January 2008 death cross appeared, the Dow had lost just 7.8% from its Oct. 9, 2007 peak. That means the bull market was still firmly in place, as the rule of thumb is a bear market is defined by a decline of at least 20% from a significant peak. In addition, the 200-day moving average didn’t turn lower until two weeks after the death cross appeared.

But this is not the only indicator pointing to trouble ahead. Even while we have many stocks hitting 52-week highs, we also have an extraordinary number hitting 52-week lows. This is called a “split market”, and this is a very ominous sign. In fact, according to Peter Boockvar 62 percent of all stocks on the New York Stock Exchange are already trading below their 200-day moving average…

Peter Boockvar, market strategist at Lindsey Group, said he believes the market is in a correction that began a few weeks ago, starting with commodities names getting hit. The small-cap Russell 2000 was also a leader of the declines. “The key is it’s infecting other areas of the market. You have every headwind and every reason to continue this correction,” he said.

“Going into today, 62 percent of the NYSE stocks were trading below the 200-day moving average,” said Boockvar. “More and more companies are dropping out of the bull market.”

At this point, we have already had more than 50 “split days” this year. King World News has just released an article which has pointed out this has only happened four times before, and a major stock market crash has followed each occurrence…

The only other times in history we’ve seen more than 50 split days during the past year were March 1968, August 1972, October 2000 and July 2006.

After all four of those, stocks lost more than a third of their value at some point during the next two years.

Are you starting to see?

A stock market crash is coming.

Another thing that has investors concerned is the fact that we have seen a large divergence between high yield credit and stocks. As Bloomberg has pointed out, when this happens a significant stock market decline follows more than 70 percent of the time…

While not without precedent, instances when anxiety in bonds didn’t seep into equities are rare. More than 70 percent of the time since 1996, as spreads widened as much as they have since April, the S&P 500 has fallen, with the average decline exceeding 10 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“This is something that sooner or later is going to impact the stock market,” said Russ Koesterich, global chief investment strategist at New York-based BlackRock Inc., which oversees $4.7 trillion. “Credit market conditions have not been benign and easy as where they were last summer.”

On top of everything else, it looks like a global currency war could be erupting.

According to USA Today, this desperate move by China to devalue the yuan may indicate that the Chinese economy is in far worse shape than most had thought…

One, China’s move suggests that its economy is in worst shape than believed. “It highlights the fragility of the global economy,” says Donald Luskin, chief investment officer at TrendMacro. Second, a weaker yuan means a stronger dollar, and a stronger dollar means U.S. products sold in China are more expensive, which means fewer sales of Apple iPhones, hotel rooms offered by Wynn Resorts and computer chips made by Micron Technology.

Lastly, there is a fear that other nations will respond to China by devaluing their own currencies to stay competitive.

“When people start talking about ‘currency wars,’ it’s never a good thing,” says Michael Farr, president of money-management firm Farr, Miller & Washington. “China’s move to devalue its currency could be the first shot across the bow towards a wider currency war.”

As I discussed yesterday, it seems like the phrase “currency war” has been thrown around a lot lately.

But what would that look like, and what would that mean for the global economy?

Well, former IMF economist Stephen Jen is suggesting that we could soon see major currencies all over the planet being devalued by up to 50 percent…

[The] devaluation of the yuan risks a new round of competitive easing that may send currencies from Brazil’s real to Indonesia’s rupiah tumbling by an average 30 percent to 50 percent in the next nine months, according to investor and former International Monetary Fund economist Stephen Jen.

Volatility measures were already signaling rising distress in emerging markets even before China’s shock move. An index of anticipated price swings climbed above a rich-world gauge at the end of July, reversing the trend seen for most of the past six months.

The surging U.S. dollar combined with crashing prices for commodity exports has already created a state of crisis in South America. If emerging markets such as Brazil are forced to devalue their currencies to stay competitive with nations such as China, that is going to just exacerbate the problems.

For a long time, things in the financial world were pretty quiet.

But now events are beginning to accelerate.

A lot of people are extremely concerned about what is going to happen in September, and I think that there are very good reasons to be concerned.

Throughout our history, the majority of our stock market crashes have happened in the fall. Just remember what happened in 1929, 1987 and 2008.

Now we are approaching that time of the year once again, and things are lining up perfectly for a major financial crisis.

So what do you personally think will happen? Please feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…

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