US Housing Starts tumbled 8.8% in March (missing -1.1% expectations by the most since Feb 2015) as both single-family (-9.2%) and multi-family units (-7.9%) tumbled. The biggest drop was in The West (-16% overall with a 26.9% MoM plunge in single-family units). Worst still, Permits (forward-looking), plunged 7.7% (agsinst expectations of 2% rise) - this is the 2nd biggest MoM crash since Jan 2011. As the Spring-selling season starts, the housing 'recovery' appears to be stalling.

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

The battle boils down to what controls the market: central banks or fundamentals.

The tug of war between Bull and Bear has rarely been so clearly matched--and the stakes have rarely been so high.

Bulls are confident that central banks have their back in 2016. After all, whatever it takes has successfully pushed equities higher for seven years. Why not an eighth?

In the following video Abby Martin explores the former secretary of States close connections to Wall Street and  large multinational corporations to reveal how the Clinton’s multi-million-dollar political machine operates. Hillary Clinton is not a candidate of the people….. she has been preparing for the role of CEO to ‘Big Money’ interests.

It appears a combination of Rosengren's comments (panic-jawboning about rates raises policy error fears), positioning unwinds (commercial hedgers covering), and gold/silver ratio compression has sparked a surge in both silver (10-month highs) and gold (back above 50dma) overnight.

The overnight spike...

Smashing Silver to 10-month highs..

UBS analyst Joni Teves tells The Financial Times:

There was some hope that after a better than expected result from JPM and, to a lesser extent MS and WFC, that Goldman would surprise to the upside. That did not happen even though the company moments ago reported EPS of $2.68 beating expectations of $2.48, which nonetheless was a 55% plunge in earnings from a year ago.