Great news ‘Murica – your house has never been worth more than it was in May (according to Case-Shiller’s national home price index). On the slightly less silver-lining side of the equation, April’s 0.28% gain in price was revised to 0.18% MoM drop and May’s point disappointed at just 0.1% rise MoM. The 20-city property values index increased 5.7% y/y (est. 5.8%). All cities in the index showed year-over-year gains, led by a 13.3 percent advance in Seattle, an 8.9 percent increase in Portland and a 7.9 percent gain in Denver. After seasonal adjustment, Seattle had the biggest month-over-month increase, at 0...
3 days of selling of less than one point per day That is what SPX has averaged over the course of the last three days when it finished lower each day – less than one measily point. For the bears that has to be infuriating. I don’t blame them – I would be too, if I were in their shoes. Now the S&P 500 is looking to gap higher to new all-time highs this morning, because at this point, that is the only thing this market really knows how to do. Earnings have been fairly well received today, with Caterpillar (CAT) popping a cool 5% in the premarket. Meanwhile, despite the three day sell-off on SPX, the VIX has been down...
Top 5 Things to Know Before You Start Trading This Tuesday the market sees a higher JPY while the USD still struggles. Oil and gold are higher. 1 – USD Still Struggling The US dollar (USD) decline slowed yesterday but the overall picture for the US currency didn’t improve. Today’s eco data will probably only be of intraday significance. Elsewhere, Greece is returning to the primary bond market for the first time since 2014. Even so, disappointing US data might still push EUR/USD closer to the key 1.1714/35 resistance level as markets look forward to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy decision. 2 – JPY Trumps USD The ...
After regaining its footing while bumping around at a 14-month low on Monday, the broad dollar is sliding hard despite rising Treasury yields as the pound and the euro soar. In fact, the dollar is now lower versus all of its G-10 peers except for the yen, which is trading as usual off Treasury yields. Here’s the euro, now pushing to 2015 highs: And here’s Sterling: It looks like this may have at least something to do with still more tweets from Trump, who was out with this a few minutes ago: Working on major Trade Deal with the United Kingdom. Could be very big & exciting. JOBS! The E.U. is very protectionist with the U.S. STOP! ...
Below looks at Copper Futures on a monthly basis, since the late 1980’s. A good deal of the past 30-years, Doc Copper has remained inside of rising channel (1), reflecting that the long-term trend is up. The top of this channel was hit back in 2011 and since then, Doc Copper has created a series of lower highs inside of falling channel (2). Before the election last year, Copper hit rising support at (3) and spent a good six months testing this support. After support held for a good length of time, a rally then took place, pushing it up to test the top of falling channel resistance. Of late, Doc Copper is breaking above 6-year falling resi...
Despite the Volatility Index (VIX) currently operating at the low end of historical ranges (9.36), the equity markets operate on a perpetual volatility rollercoaster. This period of relative calm has not stopped participants from searching for the Holy Grail of indicators in hopes of determining whether the next large move in the markets is upwards or downwards. Although markets may be efficient in the long-run (see Crisis Black Eye), in the short-run, financial markets are hostage to fear and greed, and these emotions have been on full display. Although the Dow Jones Industrial Average has almost catapulted almost +4,000 points since t...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released its U.S. House Price Index (HPI) for May. Here is the opening of the report: Washington, DC – U.S. house prices rose in May, up 0.4 percent from the previous month, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) seasonally adjusted monthly House Price Index (HPI). The previously reported 0.7 percent increase in April was revised downward to reflect a 0.6 percent increase. The FHFA monthly HPI is calculated using home sales price information from mortgages sold to, or guaranteed by, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. From May 2016 to May 2017, house prices were up 6.9 percent. For t...
According to Stratistics MRC, the Global Identity & Access Management market is estimated to grow 15% annually from $7.94 billion in 2016 to $20.87 billion by 2022. Earlier this year, Identity and Access Management services provider Okta (Nasdaq:OKTA) went public. The listing of the San Francisco-based company appears to be doing well so far. Okta’s Financials Okta’s identity management solution gets rid of duplicative credentials and disparate authentication policies to help organizations simplify and scale their IT infrastructures more efficiently. Its Identity Cloud offering allows customers to securely connect people to technolog...
On Friday, Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer resigned. What does it mean for the gold market? You can say a lot about Trump’s administration, but one thing is certain: it does not run too smoothly – on the contrary, it sees a high rate of staff turnover. As a reminder, as early as in February, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn resigned after he misled administration about his conversations with Russians. Another famous example is James Comey. And more recently, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned on Friday after he expressed his disagreement with the selection of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communicatio...
As is customary for the heavy-industrial equipment manufacturer, Caterpillar (CAT) yesterday reported its retail sales, one day ahead of earnings, and as we discussed, the number was solid with Caterpillar reporting the longest positive streak in retail sales going back 51 months. It was also a hint as to what the Dow-member would report today for its second quarter earnings, which showed a surprisingly strong performance with CAT posting impressive Q2 Q2 EPS of $1.49, above the Est. $1.25, and revenue of $11.33Bn, also beating estimates of $10.89BN, both largely due to the ongoing Chinese construction boom as the company itself admitted. &...