Saturday, March 8, 2014

Biotech Bulls May Be Near Exhaustion: IBB

On any given day, you can easily find a biotech stock that has jumped 20% or more. Sometimes, these gains even sneak into triple digits.
To understand the power of this rally, look no further than the Biotech iShares ETF (NASDAQ:IBB). This ETF has even dominated the red-hot NASDAQ, tripling its performance over the past four months.
However, the big bull run in biotechs looks like it could be nearing exhaustion.
IBB fell more than 2.6% yesterday as traders began to sell some of the stronger momentum names. And just last Friday, IBB dropped nearly 3%, marking the index’s first significant pullback in weeks.
Momentum indicators and strong downside volume are flashing warning signals here. I suspect a retreat to at least $240 for IBB in the coming weeks.
If you’re looking to limit your risk, you should consider cashing out your biotech gains and avoiding this sector as it becomes more volatile. Remember, these furious rallies are usually met with equally powerful selling. Don’t wait for the breakdown to take your gains. If you do, you might be too late…
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Copper Collapses Most Since Dec 2011 On China Credit Fears


We noted last night that Iron Ore futures prices were in free-fall as the vicious circle of China's commodity-collateral-backed shadow banking system unwind hits home amid fears of contagion from the Chaori Solar default. The first domestic Chinese corporate bond default has retail investors running scared as surprise spreads that the local government did not come to the rescue. The deleveraging is now spreading to copper prices (remember the massive cash-for-copper schemes of last year) as borrowers are forced to sell to meet cash calls which in turn drops copper prices, reducing collateral values and tightening credit conditions even more. This is the biggest copper price drop since Dec 2011...(more)

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Gold & Silver Trading Alert: Gold Fails to Rally

sunshineprofits.com / By Przemyslaw Radomski
Briefly: In our opinion short speculative positions (half) in silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective. We are closing half of the long-term investment position in gold.
As you know, we had been expecting the tensions in Ukraine to cause a significant rally in gold (not necessarily in the rest of the precious metals sector). Not only wasn’t that the case on Monday – the rally indeed took place, but it was rather average, but gold managed to decline on Tuesday while there was no visible improvement in the situation in Ukraine and on the Crimea peninsula.
Gold is not performing as strongly as it should. That is a major bearish factor. Let’s examine the situation more closely (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com.)
The move above the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level was invalidated yesterday. The move lower took place on low volume, which doesn’t confirm the rally. However, that’s not the most important thing to focus on – gold’s performance in light of the most recent events is. As mentioned earlier, it didn’t rally. In fact it’s more or less where it was a week ago. The implications are bearish.
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The Next Shoe to Drop on Your Retirement Account

by Simon Black
Sovereign Man

President Obama released his 2015 budget proposal yesterday… and as expected, it contained even more language about his MyRA initiative.
As we’ve discussed so many times in the past, IRAs are an irresistible kitty for such a bankrupt government.
The US government itself estimates that over $5 trillion is tucked away in American retirement accounts.
They need that money. Your money.
Think about it– the Chinese are starting to dump their US Treasuries in record numbers. The Social Security trust fund is also on track to start dumping Treasuries in order to pay out record numbers of retirees.
Continue Reading at SovereignMan.com…
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A ‘Home Run’ Retirement Plan

When baseball fans talk about players from the early 1900s, Babe Ruth is normally the first person mentioned. He was a great home-run hitter with 714 career home runs, a record that stood for almost 40 years.
Only two men have surpassed it. Ruth struck out 1,330 times — a record that also stood for several decades.
Most people think of Ty Cobb as a gritty player who held the career stolen-base record for many years. But let’s look a bit deeper. Ty Cobb broke into major-league baseball in 1905 at the age of 19 and hit .240 his first season. For the next 23 seasons, he hit over .300.  (more)
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Paul Craig Roberts: Greatest Threat The World Has Ever Known

kingworldnews.com / March 7, 2014
Today former US Treasury official, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, spoke with King World News about the ongoing danger the world faces because of the crisis in Ukraine.  Dr. Roberts warned “the very existence of the human race is on the line.”  The interview ends with an ominous warning for the entire world.  Below is what Dr. Roberts had to say in this remarkable and timely interview.
Dr. Roberts:  “The Parliament in Crimea has voted to secede from Ukraine and return to Russia.  The Crimean population is Russian and they don’t want anything to do with the American-orchestrated coup in western Ukraine.  In 9 days there will be a referendum to see whether a majority of the people agree with this, and of course they will.
Now, there’s been no Russian invasion.  That’s a lie coming directly out of Victoria Nuland’s State Department and it has spread all over the world….
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Time To Get Rich on Ukrainian Bonds?

Credit Markets in Crisis
In a stunning case of déjà vu (think Ireland, Greece and Portugal), credit markets are imploding in Ukraine.

The country is sitting on $10 billion in foreign-currency debt that matures this year, with the peak coming in May, June and August.

And go figure, as military tensions spiked with Russia, so did yields. In a big way.

In a matter of days, yields on six-month Ukrainian bonds more than doubled to 48%, as every sane investor hightailed it for the exits.

"This is what it looks like when the market completely loses faith in a country's finances," says Business Insider's Matthew Boesler. 
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