Business

There is little joy for bulls in David Kostin's latest weekly kickstart, in which the chief Goldman strategist says that "the S&P 500 has reached our 2016 year-end target of 2100. We expect that the index will remain at this level given tepid US GDP growth, a mixed earnings outlook, and elevated valuation. Corporate repurchases are the main source of US equity demand. We forecast S&P 500 gross buybacks will rise by 7% to $600 billion in 2016.

Submitted by Pam Martens and Russ Martens via Wall Street On Parade,

Iceland was certainly up for jailing their bankers, will they now get away with creating their own money? The government of Iceland is considering removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. Can’t see commercial banks in the western world being too happy with this somehow. Blacklisted News reports: Back in 1914, the Bradbury Pound was introduced by the UK government as an ’emergency measure’ to bolster a failing economy. It was a huge success.

Two days after we posted a note by a commodity trader according to whom "What Is Happening Has Absolutely No Reasonable Explanation" late last night we received another warning from a futures trader, one which is applicable to everyone who also trades futures and may be unfamiliar with the recent changes in Nymex and Globex "price banding."  This is what he said yesterday.

It's not just Halliburton ("What we are experiencing today is far beyond headwinds; it is unsustainable") and Intel (12,000 layoffs amid re-evaluation of programs) that are facing up to a new normal very different from expectations. As Avondale Asset Management notes, having poured over 100s of earnings transcripts, while most CEOs don’t see signs of an imminent downturn, the environment still feels a little fragile. It seems that almost everyone is on high alert for a macro curve-ball...