Earlier today we showed how, courtesy of massive synthetic positions where Oil ETFs are currently net long 272k lots of oil, equal to 56% of the front month open-interest in futures, the price of oil is being propped up by ETF buying, either outright or via an ongoing, relentless short squeeze.
Submitted by Mark Brandly via The Mises Institute,
Lately, I’ve wondered how my neighbor, Sam, affords to buy so much stuff. He appears to have an unlimited budget.
When I asked him about this, Sam asked, “Do you think I’m spending too much?”
“That depends,” I said, “How much money do you make?”
“I take home $100,000 a year.”
As the gap between GAAP and non-GAAP converges (and not in a bullish way), BofA reports the earnings estimate revision ratio (ERR) fell for the sixth consecutive month, to 0.47 from 0.49 – its lowest level since April 2009. So despite the exuberant, we're going back to record highs, rally off the lows, the real mother's milk data suggests more than twice as many cuts vs. increases to earnings forecasts over the last three months... and it's not just Energy anymore.
This is the lowest S&P500 GAAP earnings per share since 2010.
Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
Recession Probabilities Rise
As I penned earlier this week:
Before his presentation to the University of Texas, Bridgewater's Ray Dalio gave a far-ranging interview to Bloomberg's Erik Shatzker which we will have more to say about in the coming days, but the overarching theme was what to expect from markets going forward. He said that while there are "asymmetric" risks to the downside, asset prices will correct to a point where risk premiums return and investors come back, and predicted that equities will return about 4% in the long term.