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It is probably just as well that I remain gripped by the UK banking sector, a state of affair which has existed ever since the fall of Northern Rock and which continued with the appointment of a new CEO of part nationalised ‘zombie’ institution RBS – the bank that “can’t find my credit card payment.”…

With the S&P 500 at all-time highs, market sentiment clearly is in the bullish camp; this must mean that all of our problems are solved and the future is bright for everyone.. Hold on a minute: if this were true, why would consumer confidence regarding the future decrease?  The Conference Board just released its Consumer…

You can tell from the daily chart of London Mining (LOND) just why some people, including myself, very often choose to leave bargain hunting in mining stocks to either the experts – in this case Titan Investment Partners, or those who suffer from a masochistic streak. This probably also includes the company founded by the…

With consumer confidence at a six-year high and the stock market continuing to rock and roll, recording an all-time high again last week, one could be forgiven for thinking that all is well in the US economy, and that there is a promising future. Unfortunately, aggregate data often hides a much different reality behind the…

Global headline shares continue to swing between gains and losses despite the US unemployment rate dropping to 7.4% from 7.5%.  It seems the fact that the market-moving nonfarm figure which showed there was only an increase of 162,000 employed people last month compared to an expected figure of 184,000 shook sentiment.  The figure was particularly…

We touched  briefly on the concept of momentum or price action in yesterday’s article reading the smoke signals –  http://www.spreadbetmagazine.com/blog/reading-the-smoke-signals-how-the-views-of-leading-strategis.html  In it we flagged the importance of momentum / price action when making trading or investment decisions. I thought it would be instructive to look at a real world example of this in action  over…

Chinese stocks rose for a fourth day, led by property shares on growing speculation the government may relax curbs on the industry as economic growth slows. Asian stocks overall were up, following better-than-expected US unemployment claims and ISM manufacturing PMI’s. Markets reacted in favourable light after comments from the European Central Bank president Mario Draghi.…

On an almost daily basis, leading investment banks and brokers produce a veritable torrent of research notes. Such is the scale of their production that even after a judicious and regular audit I have many hundreds of these reports in my inbox each month. Most of which are sadly destined to remain unread… However, there…

Guest Post by Investment Contrarians One question that readers have asked me a lot lately is: how can they adjust their investment strategy to profit from higher interest rates? This is a great question, and to answer it, there are several strategies I would look into.  The first investment strategy that immediately appears in my…