The Associated Press ran a story reporting: “Congressional Republicans are planning a massive overhaul of the nation’s tax system, a heavy political lift that could ultimately affect families at every income level and businesses of every size.” The interesting aspect is that the headline reads: GOP: Cut taxes, change brackets; but what about deficits There is zero discussion about […]

With the exception of Japan most Asian markets were subdued in typical holiday style. It was the downgrade of Toshiba by both Moody’s and S+P that resulted in a 17% decline in its share price today and was blamed for the 1.2% decline in the Nikkei. In late US trading the Nikkei futures have fallen […]

As we approach 2017, the euro appears far worse than anyone could imagine. The biggest hypocrite is actually Mario Draghi who is outrageously managing the European Central Bank (ECB). To make this as plain as possible, the ECB is the largest individual creditor of the euro countries, and is thus a bank that is undermined completely by the poor creditworthiness of the […]

To make it clear, India is not going door to door to confiscate gold any more than FDR did. The reason so many $20 gold coins have survived is because there was no door to door confiscation. Banks and corporations who had records of gold were forced to turn their gold over and then FDR […]

After a reasonably quiet session for the US markets (when many had hoped the DOW would break the 20k level) Asia had little chance of making much ground. The Hang Seng took most of the wind out of their sales with prices down around -0.8% with many large caps lower on year end profit-taking and […]

Today, we saw the first decline for the Nikkei in eleven trading session despite better than expected Trade data (Estimated Y227.4 but actual release Y152.5bn). The Japan Index closed down just 9pts at 19,391 but breaks the winning streak with the currency trading back below the 117 level. BOJ starts its two day meeting today […]

Even with much of core Asia selling-off Japan managed a small positive return aided by the ever weakening currency. There was a similar picture painted in China where the Shanghai exchange managed a small gain but to the detriment of the Yuan. The PBOC set the currency at its weakest in eight years at 6.9508 […]

Asia was encouraged by the wests acceptance of the Italian vote and especially the Euro’s strength. Bouncing off of the key 105 levels has created a triple bottom which, if breaks, propels the market lower. we were already aware of the Nikkei’s performance through the futures contract and so cash opening created the days highs […]

The key conversation was always going to be surrounding the Federal Reserve rate decision today despite any data releases. In Japan we saw the release of the Tankan (sentiment survey) which, at 10, repeated the same level as previous release as the Nikkei closed almost unchanged on the day. The Hang Seng was a similar […]

Jill Stein is really playing very fast and loose with this whole recount thing that serves no purpose. In Wisconsin, 95% of the votes were recounted, and as of December 11, Hillary Clinton gained just 25 votes on Republican Donald Trump. President-elect Trump won the state by more than 22,000 votes. This is some sort of publicity […]