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Dan Ariely: Why The Next Market Downturn May Quickly Become A Full-Blown Panic
Dan Ariely: Why The Next Market Downturn May Quickly Become A Full-Blown Panic
Behavioral economist and author of Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely returns to explain the science underlying the continued mismanagement and mal-investment within our financial system, despite 7 years of opportunity to learn from and address the causal factors of the Great Recession.
Behavioral science shows we are our own worst enemies in this story. In a realm where everything is so quantifiable, measurable and trackable, one would expect exceptionally good decision-making. But it’s our human wiring, our proclivity for seeing things as we want them to be rather than as they truly are, that makes us vulnerable to influences we often aren’t even conscious of. And the bad decisions — and bad outcomes — ensue:
For me, as somebody interested in human behavior, there are two elements that worry me a lot. The first one is Conflicts of interest.
Conflicts of interest is one of those things that get to us without us realizing how powerful it is. Imagine that you invite me to dinner, and you buy me a beer and a sandwich and we talk more and we become friends. To what degree am I going to be able to see the world in an objective way without taking your perspective into account? It turns out conflicts of interest are wonderful because they allow us to create friendship really quite quickly. You can buy someone a beer and a sandwich and they become your friend to some degree. Once you marry this with a complex system like the financial system, all of a sudden some not-so-good things can happen.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Are Exchange-Traded Funds Preparing For A ‘Liquidity Crisis’ And A ‘Market Meltdown’?
Why Are Exchange-Traded Funds Preparing For A ‘Liquidity Crisis’ And A ‘Market Meltdown’?
Some really weird things are happening in the financial world right now. If you go back to 2008, there was lots of turmoil bubbling just underneath the surface during the months leading up to the great stock market crash in the second half of that year. When Lehman Brothers finally did collapse, it was a total shock to most of the planet, but we later learned that their problems had been growing for a long time. I believe that we are in a similar period right now, and the second half of this year promises to be quite chaotic. Apparently, those that run some of the largest exchange-traded funds in the entire world agree with me, because as you will see below they are quietly preparing for a “liquidity crisis” and a “market meltdown”. About a month ago, I warned of an emerging “liquidity squeeze“, and now analysts all over the financial industry are talking about it. Could it be possible that the next great financial crisis is right around the corner?
According to Reuters, the companies that run some of the largest exchange-traded funds in existence are deeply concerned about what a lack of liquidity would mean for them during the next financial crash. So right now they are quietly “bolstering bank credit lines” so that they will be better positioned for “a market meltdown”…
The biggest providers of exchange-traded funds, which have been funneling billions of investor dollars into some little-traded corners of the bond market, are bolstering bank credit lines for cash to tap in the event of a market meltdown.
Vanguard Group, Guggenheim Investments and First Trust are among U.S. fund companies that have lined up new bank guarantees or expanded ones they already had, recent company filings show.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Australia’s Bad Bet on China
Australia’s Bad Bet on China
Wolf here: After any bubble, it’s always: “Nobody predicted the crash….” Central bankers don’t see bubbles. They’re not allowed to. At least officially, they don’t see them. And thus they can’t see the implosions coming. They can’t officially see these things because they help create them with their monetary policies.
Industry insiders and their financiers don’t see bubbles either because they get rich off them. Politicians and bureaucrats don’t see them because bubbles make them look good and bring in a lot of moolah.
But people do see the bubbles – which are huge and easy to see – and they do predict their crashes though they might not always get the timing right. Yet, they’re pushed aside and made the most unpopular folks around, and they’re expelled from the herd, and their warnings are ignored. It happens every time. And it happened during the Australian iron-ore bubble, whose spectacular crash suddenly “nobody was predicting.” Ha! Here’s Lindsay David:
By Lindsay David, Australia, author of Print: The Central Bankers Bubble, founder of LF Economics:
Late last week Bloomberg’s James Paton released an article titled, Gina Rinehart says ‘nobody was predicting the ore price crash’
Rinehart, “Australia’s richest woman” and “chairman of Hancock Prospecting,” as the article put it, is not the only mining head, politician, treasury employee, mainstream economist, or Reserve Banker “not” to predict the ore price crash. In fact, unless I am seriously mistaken, none of them saw the price crash coming. But they have indeed ignored all the warnings by those who did predict the crash in the spot price of iron ore.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Guess What Happened The Last Time Bond Yields Crashed Like This?…
Guess What Happened The Last Time Bond Yields Crashed Like This?…
If a major financial crisis was approaching, we would expect to see the “smart money” getting out of stocks and pouring into government bonds that are traditionally considered to be “safe” during a crisis. This is called a “flight to safety” or a “flight to quality“. In the past, when there has been a “flight to quality” we have seen yields for German government bonds and U.S. government bonds go way down. As you will see below, this is exactly what we witnessed during the financial crisis of 2008. U.S. and German bond yields plummeted as money from the stock market was dumped into bonds at a staggering pace. Well, it is starting to happen again. In recent months we have seen U.S. and German bond yields begin to plummet as the “smart money” moves out of the stock market. So is this another sign that we are on the precipice of a significant financial panic?
Back in 2008, German bonds actually began to plunge well before U.S. bonds did. Does that mean that European money is “smarter” than U.S. money? That would certainly be a very interesting theory to explore. As you can see from the chart below, the yield on 10 year German bonds started to fall significantly during the summer of 2008 – several months before the stock market crash in the fall…
So what are German bonds doing today?
As you can see from this next chart, the yield on 10 year German bonds has been steadily falling since the beginning of last year. At this point, the yield on 10 year German bonds is just barely above zero…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why wobbly world markets are more worrying than oil: Don Pittis
Central bankers are out of bullets if 1929-level markets go bust again
Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz says the “wobble” in the Canadian economy caused by the shocking fall in the price of oil is just about over.
But according to some analysts, a more dangerous wobble may be connected to an entirely different mineral: mercury.
And if so, central bankers will find themselves helpless to deal with the fallout.
- Bank of Canada leaves rates unchanged after “wobble”
- China exports plunge and talk of stimulus heats up
In his news conference Wednesday, it seemed the bank governor’s biggest international concern was that the U.S. economy would grow even more quickly than he expected, forcing him to raise interest rates sooner.
Considering how everyone pounced on the his recent description of the Canadian economy as “atrocious,” there is little wonder he did not warn of an impending market crash.
‘Atrocious’ growth
With growth at zero, using the term “atrocious” was no exaggeration.
However, it just shows that if a staid but influential character like Poloz reminded us that markets — especially at current elevated levels — are mercurial, it could cause some serious fallout. Others are not so shy.
A report out of the U.S. last month titled “Quicksilver Markets,” (quicksilver being an older, less frightening word for mercury), contained a far more worrying warning: that global stock markets are now hitting levels seen just before the bursting of previous major market bubbles.
“The highest market peaks (1929, 1999 and 2007) either surpassed or approached this two-sigma level,” says the report. “Each of these peaks was followed by a sharp decline in stock prices and adverse consequences for the real economy.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Six Too Big To Fail Banks In The U.S. Have 278 TRILLION Dollars Of Exposure To Derivatives
The Six Too Big To Fail Banks In The U.S. Have 278 TRILLION Dollars Of Exposure To Derivatives
The very same people that caused the last economic crisis have created a 278 TRILLION dollar derivatives time bomb that could go off at any moment. When this absolutely colossal bubble does implode, we are going to be faced with the worst economic crash in the history of the United States. During the last financial crisis, our politicians promised us that they would make sure that “too big to fail” would never be a problem again. Instead, as you will see below, those banks have actually gotten far larger since then. So now we really can’t afford for them to fail. The six banks that I am talking about are JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. When you add up all of their exposure to derivatives, it comes to a grand total of more than 278 trillion dollars. But when you add up all of the assets of all six banks combined, it only comes to a grand total of about 9.8 trillion dollars. In other words, these “too big to fail” banks have exposure to derivatives that is more than 28 times greater than their total assets. This is complete and utter insanity, and yet nobody seems too alarmed about it. For the moment, those banks are still making lots of money and funding the campaigns of our most prominent politicians. Right now there is no incentive for them to stop their incredibly reckless gambling so they are just going to keep on doing it.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Market Tops In! Why Buy-The-Dippers Can’t Get It Up
Market Tops In! Why Buy-The-Dippers Can’t Get It Up
I am sure some chart reader can explain the S&P 500’s laborious struggle since September 2——the day it crossed the 2000 barrier—-as a classic “wall of worry”. But that event occurred nearly seven months ago and the market has dipped 15 times since then and has actually plunged six times (by more than 3%). And all it had to show for its exertions going into today’s opening was a 50 point or 2.5% gain. In this bull market, that’s a rounding error.
So we have arrived at a precarious place. After the Fed has spent six-years inflating a new and even more stupendous financial bubble—-the third this century—-the market top is in. And after five-and-one-half years of so-called recovery from the recession’s end in June 2009, the bottom is now falling out of the economy—-both abroad and here, too.
In that context, a new form of danger arises. The Keynesian pettifoggers at the Fed have painted themselves into an epochal corner. After 78 months of ZIRP they have no idea about how and why they got here; and now, mired deep in the lunacy of free money, they are clueless about where they are going next.
But here’s the thing. During its long descent into ZIRP, consensus at the Fed came from the Easy Button. Once they got to the zero bound in December 2008, it was always possible to find one more reason for delaying the day of interest rate normalization and to persuade any reluctant members of the FOMC that the economy had not quite emerged from its slump, even if “escape velocity” into full employment was just around the corner.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
One Last Look At The Real Economy Before It Implodes – Part 2
One Last Look At The Real Economy Before It Implodes – Part 2
Consumer spending in the U.S. accounts for approximately 70 percent of gross domestic product, though it is important to note that the manner in which “official” GDP is calculated is highly inaccurate. For example, all government money used within the Medicare coverage system to pay for “consumer health demands,” as well as the now flailing Obamacare socialized welfare program, are counted toward GDP, despite the fact that such capital is created from thin air by the Federal Reserve and also generates debt for the average taxpayer. Government debt creation does not beget successful domestic production. If that was a reality, then all socialist and communist countries (same thing) would be wildly enriched today. This is simply not the case.
That said, the swift decline in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. over the past two decades, including a considerable 33 percent overall decline in manufacturing jobs from 2001 to 2010, leaves only the consumer and service sectors as the primary areas of employment and “production.” The service sector provides about three out of every four jobs available in America, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The truth is that America actually produces very little that is tangible beyond Big Macs, pharmaceuticals and the occasional overpriced fighter jet that doesn’t function correctly and is filled with Chinese parts. All three will kill you at varying degrees of speed…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Get Ready for a “Zero Returns” World…
Get Ready for a “Zero Returns” World…
Dear Diary,
Where is that old and tattered “Crash Alert” flag?
Many times since the start of the rally in US stocks in 2009, we hoisted it. And many times has it failed to give us a useful signal.
But we will bring it out again, if a bit sheepishly… and let it wave, in the warm Argentine air.
Why? Do we know a crash is coming?
No, of course not.
Is our flag a good indicator of what will happen?
Apparently not.
But we regard it like the “Shark Alert” flags you see on the beaches of Australia. (Down Under is the only country in the world to have a chief of state who was eaten by a shark.)
The “Shark Alert” flag doesn’t mean you can’t go swimming. It means if a shark takes a bite out of you, it’s your own damned fault.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Federal Reserve Insider Alan Greenspan Warns: There Will Be a “Significant Market Event… Something Big Is Going To Happen”
Federal Reserve Insider Alan Greenspan Warns: There Will Be a “Significant Market Event… Something Big Is Going To Happen”
With the Federal Reserve printing trillions upon trillions of dollars to keep the economic system afloat, many investors and financial pundits have surmised that the fundamental economic problems facing the United States during the crash of 2008 have been resolved. Stocks are, after all, at historic highs.
But the insiders know different. And if there’s any single person out there who understands U.S. monetary policy and its long-term effects on domestic and global affairs it’s former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. As the head of the world’s most powerful central bank for nearly two decades he’s privy to the insider conversations and government machinations that have brought us to where we are today.
Greenspan recently joined veteran resource analyst Brien Lundin at the New Orleans Investment Conference to share some of his thoughts. According to Lundin, the former Fed chairman made it clear that the central bank is facing a serious problem and one that will have significant ramifications in the future.
We asked him where he thought the gold price will be in five years and he said “measurably higher.”
In private conversation I asked him about the outstanding debts… and that the debt load in the U.S. had gotten so great that there has to be some monetary depreciation. Specially he said that the era of quantitative easing and zero-interest rate policies by the Fed… we really cannot exit this without some significant market event… By that I interpret it being either a stock market crash or a prolonged recession, which would then engender another round of monetary reflation by the Fed.
He thinks something big is going to happen that we can’t get out of this era of money printing without some repercussions – and pretty severe ones – that gold will benefit from.
Watch the full interview:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
And I Didn’t Even Mention Greece, the End of the Euro or Evil Russia!! Yikes!
And I Didn’t Even Mention Greece, the End of the Euro or Evil Russia!! Yikes!
This is a screen shot from my iPhone about a week ago. And really this says it all. Breaking news is highlighting the all time highs again while the underlying economic news is negative across the board. No other time in history could the economy be in such dire straits and have the market completely apathetic to it. Whether it’s total debt, Consumer debt, retail sales, housing, productivity, inventories, full time jobs, GDP, wages, just about any indicator it is negative.
And if we put it in the context of having such extreme monetary policies with the sole intent toward all of these moving in a highly positive direction the above indications aren’t just terrible they are frightening. It’s kind of like when you’re in a fight and you’ve just hit the other guy with your best punch and he doesn’t flinch. You start to think this ain’t going to end very well. I expect the Fed folks are suffering from a case of the ‘oh shit that was the best I got’ syndrome.
Our nation’s ‘best and brightest’ economists and financial ‘experts’ have created policies that are their best ideas to generate economic growth and these policies have failed completely. The only thing preventing this nation from a full on collapse is an all time high stock market. And that is the only reason the market is at all time highs. Volume is sparse, institutional money is on the sidelines and every damn metric you can think of is falling apart yet markets are at all time highs, thanks to the Fed.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Myth of Black Swan Market Events
The Myth of Black Swan Market Events
Mark Spitznagel is the founder and chief investment officer of Universa Investments, and the author of “The Dao of Capital.”
As André Gide, the French Nobel laureate in literature, once said, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
Indeed, no one has been listening to the past hundred years of stock market history in the United States.
We have data going back a century that shows the total aggregate valuation of corporate America (think the stock market) in relation to the estimated aggregate replacement value of its stock of capital (think machines, equipment, buildings, chairs, etc.). It is similar in concept to an aggregate price-to-book ratio.
This has come to be known as the Tobin’s Q ratio; the higher the ratio, the higher the price of corporate valuations relative to their tangible capital, and the more “expensive” the stock market.
You would think that this ratio shouldn’t get far out of whack from a long-run average. If average companies became valued high relative to their tangible capital, this would imply that they earn high returns on their existing equipment, and thus further investment in more equipment (growth) should more than “pay for itself” in the form of higher valuations.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Birth Pangs Of The Coming Great Depression
Birth Pangs Of The Coming Great Depression
The signs of the times are everywhere – all you have to do is open up your eyes and look at them. When a pregnant woman first goes into labor, the birth pangs are usually fairly moderate and are not that close together. But as the time for delivery approaches, they become much more frequent and much more intense. Economically, what we are experiencing right now are birth pangs of the coming Great Depression. As we get closer to the crisis that is looming on the horizon, they will become even more powerful. This week, we learned that the Baltic Dry Index has fallen to the lowest level that we have seen in 29 years. The Baltic Dry Index also crashed during the financial collapse of 2008, but right now it is already lower than it was at any point during the last financial crisis. In addition, “Dr. Copper” and other industrial commodities continue to plunge. This almost always happens before we enter an economic downturn. Meanwhile, as I mentioned the other day, orders for durable goods are declining. This is also a traditional indicator that a recession is approaching. The warning signs are there – we just have to be open to what they are telling us.
And of course there are so many more parallels between past economic downturns and what is happening right now.
For example, volatility has returned to the markets in a big way. On Tuesday the Dow was down about 300 points, on Wednesday it was down another couple hundred points, and then on Thursday it was up a couple hundred points.
This is precisely how markets behave just before they crash. When markets are calm, they tend to go up. When markets get really choppy and start behaving erratically, that tells us that a big move down is usually coming.
At the same time, almost every major global currency is imploding. For much more on this, see the amazing charts in this article.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Real Crisis Will Be North of $100 Trillion | Zero Hedge
The Real Crisis Will Be North of $100 Trillion | Zero Hedge.
The 2008 crash was a warm up.
Many investors think that the markets could never have a crash again. They think that the 2008 meltdown was a one in 100 years crisis.
They are wrong.
The 2008 Crisis was a stock and investment bank crisis. But it was not THE Crisis. THE Crisis concerns the biggest bubble in financial history: the epic Bond bubble…
If you need proof that bonds are in a truly epic bubble… one that will implode the financial system when it breaks… consider that half of ALL government bonds in the world currently yield less than 1%.
What is clear is that the world has become addicted to central bank stimulus. Bank of America said 56pc of global GDP is currently supported by zero interest rates, and so are 83pc of the free-floating equities on global bourses. Half of all government bonds in the world yield less that 1pc. Roughly 1.4bn people are experiencing negative rates in one form or another.
These are astonishing figures, evidence of a 1930s-style depression, albeit one that is still contained. Nobody knows what will happen as the Fed tries to break out of the stimulus trap, including Fed officials themselves.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/11283875/Bank-of-America-sees-50-oil-as-Opec-dies.html
Why are yields this low?
Why 1998 Was Different, and Same, to Emerging-Market Crisis Now – Bloomberg
Why 1998 Was Different, and Same, to Emerging-Market Crisis Now – Bloomberg.
Oil prices were tanking. Emerging-market currencies were in a freefall. Venezuela was mired in a financial crisis and Russia had sunk into a debt default and devaluation.
The year was 1998.
Emerging markets today look a lot like they did back then. Yet there have been key changes that could help most of them escape full-blown crises. Here’s a look at the similarities and differences between now and then.
Similarities
*Falling Oil Prices
Crude has dropped 48 percent since June to about $55 a barrel, squeezing exporters from Venezuela to Russia and Nigeria. Credit default swaps show a 97 percent probability that Venezuela will default on its bonds within five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Russian economy, which is under sanctions by the U.S. and the European Union over the Ukraine conflict, will contract as much as 4.7 percent next year if oil remains at $60, the central bank said.
