US & Canada Archives - Page 121 of 171

October 15, 2012

US: Not yet out of the woods

The S&P 500 found support at 1430, closing the day with a decent blue candle. Avoidance of a double top and recovery above the lower trend channel indicate another test of 1475, but 21-day Twiggs Money Flow below zero still warns of medium-term selling pressure — a peak below zero would strengthen the signal. Breakout above 1475, however, would signal a primary advance, while reversal below 1430 would warn of a correction.

S&P 500 Index

* Target calculation: 1420 + ( 1420 – 1280 ) = 1560

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (weekly chart) is similarly testing support at 13300. Bearish divergence on 63-day Twiggs Momentum indicates a weakening up-trend, and reversal below zero would warn of a primary down-trend. Recovery above 13650 would confirm the advance, while reversal below 13000 and the primary trendline would signal trend weakness.

Dow Jones Industrial Average

* Target calculation: 13000 + ( 13000 – 12000 ) = 14000

Colin Twiggs

Colin Twiggs is a former investment banker with almost 40 years of experience in financial markets. He co-founded Incredible Charts and writes the popular Trading Diary and Patient Investor newsletters.

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

Focusing on interest rates and financial market liquidity as primary drivers of the economic cycle, he warned of the 2008/2009 and 2020 bear markets well ahead of actual events.
He founded PVT Capital (AFSL No. 546090) in May 2023, which offers investment strategy and advice to wholesale clients.

October 15, 2012

5 Steps Obama or Romney Must Take to Fix Wall Street

By SUZANNE MCGEE

In [Sheila Bair’s] view ….. we haven’t yet come to grips with many of the problems that produced the crisis.

Too many regulators fall victim to one of several fatal flaws, Bair suggested in a speech to the National Association for Business Economics yesterday. Some of them over or under-regulate (usually at the wrong point in the cycle); they devise impossibly complex rules; they are “closet free-marketeers” proposing convoluted rules to prove it’s impossible to regulate financial institutions, or they are “captive” regulators who, without any corruption or malfeasance involved, have simply subordinated their judgment to those of the organizations they are charged with overseeing.

The former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation suggests five steps that presidential candidates should take to fix Wall Street………

via 5 Steps Obama or Romney Must Take to Fix Wall Street.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

October 12, 2012

Forex: Euro recovers, Aussie & Sterling weaken

The Euro is headed for another re-test of resistance at $1.32 and its descending trendline. Breakout would signal a primary up-trend. Recovery of 63-day Twiggs Momentum above zero strengthens the signal. Reversal below $1.26 is unlikely but would warn of another test of primary support at $1.20.

Euro/USD

* Target calculation: 1.275 + ( 1.275 – 1.20 ) = 1.35

Pound Sterling is testing support at €1.23 against the Euro. Breach of support — and the rising trendline — would warn the primary up-trend is ending. Retreat of 63-day Twiggs Momentum below zero would strengthen the signal.

Pound Sterling/Euro

Canada’s Loonie is testing support against the greenback at $1.02/$1.01. Respect of support — with recovery above $1.027 — would confirm the primary up-trend. A 63-day Twiggs Momentum trough above zero would strengthen the signal. Target for the advance is the 2011 high of $1.06.

Canadian Loonie/Aussie Dollar

* Target calculation: 1.04 +( 1.04 – 1.01 ) = 1.07

The Aussie Dollar found support at $1.02/$1.015 on the daily chart. Follow-through above $1.03 would suggest another test of $1.06. Failure of support is unlikely but would signal a primary down-trend. 63-Day Twiggs Momentum troughs above zero indicate continuation of the primary up-trend. Expect strong resistance at $1.06: the Aussie may be range-bound for some time.

Aussie Dollar/USD

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

October 11, 2012

The difference between California and Texas

Amusing parable told by Dallas Fed President Richard W Fisher at the Cato Institute:

“The governor of California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks the governor’s dog, then bites the governor. The governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie Bambi and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural.

“He calls animal control. Animal control captures the coyote and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases. The governor goes to the hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and getting his bite wound bandaged.

“The running trail gets shut down for six months while the California Fish and Game Department conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of dangerous animals. The governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a ‘coyote awareness program’ for residents of the area. The Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world.

“The governor’s security agent is fired for not stopping the attack. The state spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training, re: the nature of coyotes. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protests the coyote’s relocation and files a $5 million suit against the state.

“The governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and tries to attack him and his dog. The governor shoots the coyote with his state-issued pistol and keeps jogging.

“The governor spent 50 cents on a .380-caliber, hollow-point cartridge. Buzzards ate the dead coyote.

“And that, my friends, is why California is broke and Texas is not.”

Australians will identify with his description of a “nanny-state”.

via The United States Is Not Europe and Texas Ain't France: America as the Thoroughbred Economy – Dallas Fed.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

October 11, 2012

The United States Is Not Europe and Texas Ain't France

Extract from remarks by Richard W. Fisher, President of the Dallas Fed, before the Cato Institute:

….Under both Republican and Democratic leadership, we did what was economically sensible. The result was a long-lived expansion. But it ended in tears. Success led to complacency; complacency led to a tolerance and even encouragement of excess. We spent more than we could afford; our government—Republicans and Democrats alike—continued, at an accelerated pace, down the path of promising more in social programs and other spending programs than we could sustain. And on the regulatory front, we turned a collective blind eye to economic malpractice, resulting in the spectacular failure of Enron and culminating with the collapse of megabanks for which even a cursory glance at their balance sheets would have revealed, in the words of one of my colleagues, “nothing on the right was right and nothing on the left was left.”…….

via The United States Is Not Europe and Texas Ain’t France: America as the Thoroughbred Economy – Dallas Fed.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

October 10, 2012

US: Double top threatened

The S&P 500 respected resistance at 1475 and is testing support at 1430. The Dow displays a similar formation with support at 13300. Breakout below 1430 would complete a double top, warning of a correction. Reversal of 21-day Twiggs Money Flow below zero indicates rising selling pressure. Respect of support is unlikely but would suggest an advance to the upper trend channel.

S&P 500 Index

* Target calculation: 1420 + ( 1420 – 1280 ) = 1560

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

October 10, 2012

Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo Calls for Cap on Bank Size – WSJ.com

By VICTORIA MCGRANE And ALAN ZIBEL:

“In a Philadelphia speech, Fed governor Daniel Tarullo recommended curbing banks’ growth by putting a limit on their nondeposit liabilities, which are sources of funding for operations that go beyond consumer deposits. The idea takes direct aim at the biggest U.S. banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs and Citigroup Inc., all of which rely heavily on such funding. Firms outside of this tier make much greater use of regular deposits…..”

Comment:~ Rather than placing a fixed size limit on too-big-to-fail banks, it may be more effective to raise capital adequacy ratios and/or leverage ratios for banks above a certain size — to discourage further growth. There may well be advantages, such as economies of scale, that enable large banks to deliver better pricing to their customers — and justify their size — but we need to guard against systemic risks. Rather than setting a size limit, higher ratios would ensure that large banks are well capitalized to withstand systemic shocks.

via Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo Calls for Cap on Bank Size – WSJ.com.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

October 10, 2012

Failing History – By Amy Zegart | Foreign Policy

By AMY ZEGART

The more important and overlooked lesson…. is that the structure of the U.S. intelligence system made a tough job nearly impossible. Although the CIA was created in 1947 to prevent another Pearl Harbor, the agency has never really been central. Intelligence agencies in the State, War, Navy, and Justice departments hobbled the CIA from its earliest days to protect their own turf. As a result, in 1962 intelligence reporting and analysis about Cuba was handled by half a dozen agencies with different missions, specialties, incentives, security clearance levels, access to information, and no common boss with the power to knock bureaucratic heads together short of the president. In this bureaucratic jungle, signals of Khrushchev’s true intentions — and there were several — got dispersed and isolated instead of consolidated and amplified to sound the alarm.

Sound familiar? Before 9/11, this same fragmentation kept U.S. intelligence agencies from seizing 23 different opportunities to disrupt the terrorist plot…….

via Failing History – By Amy Zegart | Foreign Policy.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

October 8, 2012

The unemployment surprise

Headline unemployment may be falling but this extract from John Mauldin summarises the US predicament:

We are employing almost 5% fewer people as a percentage of our population than we were at the beginning of 2008. That means our real unemployment-to-population level is well over 12%. So we’re not even close to where we were in 1999, during the last year of the Clinton administration. And that doesn’t take into account the 50% of college graduates who are underemployed. A significant part of the problem is simply the fact that we are trying to recover from a deleveraging recession. The data suggests that such recoveries may take 10 years. For Japan it is more than 20 years, and counting.

The unemployment surprise (pdf).

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

October 8, 2012

Canada: TSX60 finds support

The TSX 60 found support at 700, with 13-week Twiggs Money Flow — oscillating above zero — reflecting continued long-term buying pressure. Expect a test of the 2012 high at 725; breakout would signal a primary up-trend. Reversal below 700 is unlikely but would warn of another test of primary support at 640.

TSX 60 Index

* Target calculation: 725 + ( 725 – 640 ) = 810

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.