When one month ago, Italy was scrambling to unveil a "last resort" bad bank bailout fund (which eventually received the name Atlante, or Atlas, for the Titan god who was condemned to hold up the sky for eternity, only in this case he is holding up Italy's €360 billion in bad loans), many wondered why the rush?
Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
Last week, I noted technical breakout of the market above the downtrend line from last May, such a move required an increase in exposure to equity risk. To wit:
“With the breakout of the market yesterday, and given that ‘short-term buy signals’ are in place I began adding exposure back into portfolios. This is probably the most difficult ‘buy’ I can ever remember making.”
While the US Treasury's semi-annual report on the foreign-exchange policies of major U.S. trading partners has traditionally been, pardon the pun, a paper tiger, as the US has not named a single country as a currency manipulator since it did so to China in 1994, and it didn't go so far as to blame any country as an outright manipulator in the just released April edition, there was a new addition to the latest report.
Remember Wednesday night... after Facebook crushed it...
Overheard behind the scenes at CNBC today...
Submitted by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
Russia and Saudi Arabia have been (relatively) quietly fighting for market share in China ever since oil prices started their downward spiral in mid-2014 - now the battle is heating up, and teapot refineries are what could tip the balance.