Gold bugs should be wishing the U.S. government begins to run larger deficits. There are tons of reasons why the yellow metal has been languishing since it peaked in September 2011, but it turns out it does correlate negatively with … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of November 10, 2015. Change is week-over-week. (Due to Veterans Day, a Federal holiday, last week, the CFTC released numbers on Monday.) 10-year note: “Muted global economic growth will not support a … Continued
U.S. small-caps suddenly came to life last week, and shorts have a decision to make. The Russell 2000 small cap index was up 3.3 percent last week (Chart 1), and IWM, the iShares Russell 2000 ETF, up 3.4 percent. In … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of November 3, 2015. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: Three prominent Fed officials tried to convince the markets this week that December was in play in earnest. Testifying before the House Financial … Continued
The importance of consumers in the U.S. economy cannot be stressed enough. Real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) accounted for 68.6 percent of gross domestic product in the third quarter. Five decades ago, PCE’s share was nine points lower. Put another … Continued
In the past month, as U.S. stocks persistently climbed to high altitudes, air has progressively gotten thinner as far as shorts are concerned. With that said, the action last Friday raises the odds that the latter is about to get … Continued
In the latest reporting period, there was a big drop in short interest on IWM, the iShares Russell 2000 ETF. It dropped 10.1 percent period-over-period to 118 million shares – the lowest since the middle of August. Shorts had been … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of October 27, 2015. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: Once again, the Fed took a pass. Its decision this week not to raise interest rates was expected. What was not expected was … Continued
Up until Wednesday last week, the hypothetical trade involving a weekly short put on SPY, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, was going pretty well. Then came the 2.8-percent jump in the remaining two sessions, and the trade began to bleed. … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of October 20, 2015. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: At the press conference following the ECB meeting on Thursday, when asked by a WSJ reporter as to why the bank is fighting … Continued