Every equity trader’s friend Mr “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke stated yesterday the FED might start cutting on its asset purchasing program this year and eventually end it completely by mid 2014. The Federal Open Market Committee left its pace of monthly asset purchases unchanged at $85 billion as widely expected by investors, but made clear to…
Hedge funds and other large speculators are continuing to cut their bullish bets on gold as they position ahead of the Federal Reserve likely reducing its asset purchase program in just a few months time. According to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, net-long positions on futures and options contracts decreased by 4.1% as a…
It is fair to say that both AVM and KAZ have been our complete disasters this year (there is always a few each year and it is part of the market process – nobody gets them all right). As regular readers will know however, I am a big, big, big believer in management alignment and,…
As we race down to the 2nd deadline of next Monday at 5PM for the 3 oligarchs to table a firm bid for ENRC (and there is unlikely to be a 3rd extension), we find ourselves in an intriguing game theory situation. Given that the independent Board of Directors rejected the last offer as “materially…
This month’s theme is: “Structural Stock Market Sentiment”. Unlike the weekly Bull/Bear Indicator of market letter writers’ sentiment or the regular AAII member poll of optimists/pessimists, which can flip from bullish to bearish extremes rather quickly (literally in a couple of weeks), my view of investor psychology has a longer-term perspective. It is a three part…
Over the past few weeks I had been busily writing a mini book on my top 10 favourite AIM stocks both long and short exclusively for this publication. In that time, while the 12,000 words were being extracted from what is left of the Zak Mir brain, it would appear that the world has become…
If one were to look at the current state of the stock market, because of the substantial run-up in prices, one would think that investor sentiment is being based on the bullish opinion that corporate earnings will continue to rise. However, a look below the surface would reveal that corporate earnings are not growing anywhere…
Volatility has been edging higher since the end of 2012, but so far, the stock market has held up pretty well. Take a look at the chart below of the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), also known as the “Fear Factor Index,” based on the S&P 500 Index. The VIX reading is holding around 16.8—well below…
Yesterday’s trade on Wall Street demonstrated there is still a good deal of bullish sentiment out there. Going against this is usually a sure-fire way to trading oblivion but, I am still sticking to my guns. Given that the outlook for stocks is pretty much interlinked with the outlook for QE, the two day meeting…
Investors are returning to Europe as they retreat from emerging market and Japanese equities, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey for June. Investor confidence has risen in the past month in spite of market instability and a 2.5 percent fall in world equities over the survey period. A net 56 percent of global investors believe the…
