Business

Another week, and another quiet exodus by the "smart money" clients of Bank of America (hedge funds, institutionals and private money), who collective sold $218 million in stocks, the 17th consecutive week of selling completely oblivious of a market that "wants to go higher" according to Bob Pisani, and as BofA notes, "continuing the longest uninterrupted selling streak in our data history (since '08)."

Here is the full breakdown:

The rolling four-week average trends by client type:

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

Cash is a proxy for the freedom to maintain some privacy in an era of Big Brother repression, surveillance and the suppression of dissent.

I've covered the war on cash i.e. the proposed elimination of cash, a number of times, for example, The War On Cash: Officially Sanctioned Theft (June 13, 2015)

There was a lot of headscratching in today's New Home Sales reported released moments ago by the Census Bureau, according to which there was a whopping 619K new home sold in April, up from the upward revised 531K (was 511K), and smashing expectations of a 523K print, driven by a surge in Northeast home sales which soared unexpectedly from 36K in March to 55K in April, a completely unexplained 53% spike.

The head-scratching is most prevalent among the 75 economists who attempted to forecast this number... but missed by 17 standard deviations!!

Having spiked mysteriously to 6 year highs in March (from 4 year lows in Feb), Richmond Fed's manufacturing survey crashed back into contraction in May (printing -1 against =14 prior and +8 expectations).

Weakness was broad-based across the entire set of subcomponents with New Orders plunging, shipments crashing, employees and workweek tumbling, and worse still future employment and capex expectations dropped precipitously.  

The drop in the last 2 months is the largest in the 23 year history of the survey.

World’s Largest Asset Manager Blackrock: “Perfect Time” For Gold

The world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock Inc., has written a note about gold in which it suggests that this is the “perfect time and place” for gold due to “low and even negative yields, slow growth and potential signs of rising inflation.”