Gold And Silver Bullion Coin And Bar Shortages Continue

by GoldCore

 

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,476.50, EUR 1,124.95 and GBP 949.34 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,456.00, EUR 1,106.22 and GBP 935.07 per ounce.

Cross Currency Table – (Bloomberg)

Gold rose $8.10 or 0.56% yesterday to $1,466.80/oz and silver finished + 0.68%.

Physical demand for coins and bars internationally continues and is the strongest since the immediate aftermath of the Lehman Brothers collapse on September 15, 2008, and the consequent global [...]

Mints, Refineries, Brokerages Out Of Stock – COMEX Gold Inventories Plummet

by GoldCore

 

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,462.25, EUR 1,123.43 and GBP 947.79 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,446.50, EUR 1,107.07 and GBP 937.64 per ounce.

Comex Gold Inventory Plummet

Gold climbed $33.90 or 2.37% yesterday to $1,464.30/oz and silver surged +4.83%.

Gold has surged 4.9% in dollar terms so far this week and is headed for its biggest weekly gain in one-and-a-half years. Gold has recovered in all currencies and is up [...]

We Have Reached the Terminus, The Stock Market Is Breaking Down, With The Small-Caps and Transports Severely Underperforming… James Turk – Unspeakable Financial Destruction Is Headed Our Way

Underneath The Surface, People Are Seeing Signs That The Stock Market Is Breaking Down

Doug Kass says the same thing today, pointing to “subsurface weakness” in the market.

Here are a few points Kass highlights in his note:

The Russell 2000 underperformed on Monday (-1.3%) and was down (-0.5%) on an up day on Tuesday.

The advance/decline line is eroding as the market’s rise narrows.

Breadth disappointed – yesterday, NYSE decliners eclipsed advancing issues by over 200, excluding ETFs and fixed-income [...]

Gold and Silver ETFs “Backed Only By The Good Faith Of Banks and Brokerages”

by GoldCore

 

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,591.50, EUR 1,221.98 and GBP 1,062.42 per ounce.

Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,582.50, EUR 1,216.37and GBP 1,065.30 per ounce.
Both gold and silver rose by almost 1% yesterday. Gold rose $12.20 and closed at $1,593.30/oz. Silver closed at $29.15/oz.

Silver is trading at $29.08/oz, €22.44/oz and £19.51/oz.

Platinum is trading at $1,590.25/oz, palladium at $767.00/oz and rhodium at $1,200/oz.

Gold remains near the highest level in almost two [...]

Why You Can Trust Your Analyst Again: Ingrid Rico

Why You Can Trust Your Analyst Again: Ingrid Rico

Brian Sylvester of The Gold Report (2/11/13)

Within the universe of junior mining companies, investors need to be choosy, says Ingrid Rico, mining analyst at Toronto-based investment bank M Partners. In this interview with The Gold Report, Rico explains how analysts value miners and reveals how she will be looking at junior mining companies in 2013—with a skeptical eye, preferring those funded to [...]

Must-read: A riveting profile of a former Wall Street titan

From The Reformed Broker:

Long before Greg Smith… or the Vampire Squid… or Zero Hedge… or the Billion Dollar Global Settlement… or the repeal of Glass-Steagal, there was Sandy “S.B.” Lewis, the original Reformed Broker.

Before I was even born (let alone blogging), Sandy was puttin’ the wood to ‘em and telling the truth.

He became disgusted at an early time in his career, tried to do things right, got along with no [...]

Today’s entertainment: The big banks are hatching a “diabolical” new plan

From The Reformed Broker:

(Interior: an oak paneled boardroom with dimmed lights, the muffled sound of thunder from outside the building can be heard intermittently.)

OK, settle down, thank you all for coming this morning. As the heads of the 25 largest financial institutions in the country, I realize you’re all very busy, so I’ll keep this brief.

I have a plan, you see. It’s a daring idea, but a brilliant one. It [...]

Merrill Lynch internal memo: Prepare for fundamental geopolitical shift

Merrill Lynch is quietly circulating a memo which tells its affluent clients to reposition themselves — and their portfolios — for a fundamental geopolitical shift.

http://m.cnbc.com/us_news/48129124?refresh=true

 

The only way brokerages make money from their clients is when they can get their clients to move money from one investment to another. They have no use for the “buy & hold” clients.

 

REPORT: Asia investment banks launch new round of job cuts as China’s economy slowing down

 

HONG KONG: Investment banks and brokerages across Asia have launched a sweeping round of job cuts as Europe’s debt crisis and China’s economic slowdown bite into the region’s financial activity.

Speaking to bankers and other industry sources, Reuters was able to confirm at least 50 people were let go in the past three weeks, a cull that includes senior expatriates as well as junior bankers. The cuts mainly target the equities business, with [...]

Bloomberg: Students Pay SLM 9.25% on Exploitative Loans for College

“It was like signing up for iTunes,” said Austin Bousley, 25, who applied on the Internet for a private loan from SLM, known as Sallie Mae, as a student at Suffolk University in Boston.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-05/students-pay-slm-9-25-on-exploitive-loans-for-college.html

Wall Street CEO Pay Rises 20% With KKR’s Kravis No. 1
Kravis and Roberts, 68, lead a list of 50 financial CEOs whose compensation collectively rose by an average of 20.4 percent in 2011 — a year when [...]

New York broker demands $35 million compensation for Facebook IPO shambles:

A NEW YORK broker has asked Nasdaq to compensate it for up to $US35 million ($A36.01 million) in losses on the Facebook initial public offering due to the market’s computer problems on the first day of trade.

Knight Capital said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission late on Wednesday that it had submitted a claim to Nasdaq over losses related to Friday’s computer problems, which disrupted buy [...]

THE $40 BILLION VANISH

Reuters

 

In its three days of trading, Facebook’s stock has dropped 18 percent from its $38 issue price. For the thousands of investors that bought at the IPO, that’s bad enough, but one analysis of itsearnings prospects suggests it could get a lot worse – more like $10 a share.

Setting aside the hype and the cultural phenomenon that is the online networking site, Facebook Inc would be fairly priced at $9.59, according [...]

Wall St Week Ahead: The market is oversold, but major signs say “sell”

By Angela Moon

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Normally a big decline would set up Wall Street for a technical rebound. But that may not be the case next week, even after the market posted its worst weekly loss for the year and the S&P fell for six straight sessions.

With the corporate earnings season drawing to an end and recent U.S. economic data raising doubts about the pace of growth, the S&P [...]

Several brokerages stop taking Facebook IPO orders | Reuters

Investors who want Facebook Inc shares when the No. 1 online social network goes public later this week may have lost the opportunity. TD Ameritrade and Fidelity’s brokerage arm both stopped accepting orders of Facebook shares as of Tuesday evening, according to representatives for each of the companies.

Morgan Stanley & Co did the same, according to three advisers at the firm who declined to be named because they are not [...]

Merrill MVPs earn half firm’s revenue, big paychecks

Wed May 9, 2012 3:47pm EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The multimillion-dollar signing bonuses that big brokerages are doling out to recruit elite brokers may seem excessive, but internal reports from Merrill Lynch show why firms are willing to pay top dollar for a top broker.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/09/us-merrill-brokers-elite-idUSBRE84817N20120509

Do not fall for this Facebook investment scam, the brokerages are out in full force this week and next…

From The Reformed Broker:

If you have a working telephone and an affluent zip code, you have likely been getting all kinds of calls from brokers over the years, but none so insidious as the one I’m about to reveal.

The bucket shops in lower Manhattan, northern New Jersey, and Long Island simply couldn’t watch the Facebook & social media IPO desperation blood orgy from the sidelines without springing into action. Brokers [...]

84% of All Stock Trades Are By High-Frequency Computers … Only 16% Are Done By Human Traders

by George Washington

 

As of 2010, 50-70% of all stock trades were done by high frequency trading computer algorithms.

And many other asset classes are dominated by high frequency trading as well.

High-frequency trading distorts the markets.  And see this and   this.  And it lets the big banks peak at what the real traders are buying and selling, and then trade on the insider information. See this, this, this, and this.

Morgan Stanley has just shown (via the Financial Times) that the percentage of high frequency trading in [...]

Greed is good again on Wall Street: Banks TRIPLE their bonuses in bidding war over top brokers

The bonuses can reach $15million for some teams over the course of years
The bidding war has reached its highest level since the financial crisis hit the U.S.
Brokers are offered two to three times the commissions and feed they made in the previous year

Bonuses offered by the U.S.’s biggest securities companies to recruit top brokers are reaching their loftiest levels since the financial crisis, and none of the big firms are [...]

China survey: Hard landing possible but not likely; While top global fund managers and economists see China as unlikely to suffer a hard landing, they differ on exactly what such a ‘hard landing’ would look like… Walker said a hard landing for the Chinese economy was “already inevitable” because of “mispriced capital.”

By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch

HONG KONG – The possibility that China will suffer an economic shock within the next three years is remote, but the risks are very real and the country may have to navigate several major hazards to avert it, according to fund managers and economists polled by MarketWatch.

Nine of the 19 major global investment managers and brokerages that participated in the survey said a [...]

MF Global trustee sees shortfall of $1.6 billion.

The trustee overseeing MF Global’s liquidation said Friday that the shortfall between the funds under his control and the amount customers of the failed brokerage are expected to claim is at least $1.6 billion.

The gap estimated by the court-appointed trustee, James Giddens, compares with his previous estimate of $1.2 billion. Giddens said in a statement Friday that the new estimate is based on his investigation and it could change again.

Giddens [...]

Simon Black: HOW TO CONDUCT YOUR OWN DUE DILIGENCE ON A BANK OR BROKER

January 20, 2012
Santiago, Chile

Greetings once again. It’s another beautiful, sunny day in Chile today, and I’m about off to our farm south of town to spend a wonderful weekend with good food and great friends. Before I sign off for the week, though, there are a few questions I wanted to address:

First, Louise asks, “Simon, that last edition of SMC really blew me away, I appreciate you serving up such [...]

A Hedge Fund Insider: ‘The finance industry is a complete scam, designed to funnel money from the 99% investing public into the hands of the top .1%. Sure, some of you will make good money, but stastically, the rest of us will lose, and who is feeding off us? Hedge funds, and the .1%.’

From Reddit:  I work in Wall Street and work in hedge fund analysis. I’m the only person in my office who supports OWS

This is a self-post, so I’m not trying to karma-whore or anything. I have a message I want to share with anyone who’s interested.

I’m writing this in hopes that the OWS movement can have a better understanding of the hedge fund industry and the financial markets. With OWS being the [...]

Why are we not surprised that the Fed took aim at mortgage fraud and ended up shooting the housing market in the gut. Here’s a simple guide to what’s good and bad for housing:

Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

Fed Aims At Mortgage Fraud, Shoots Housing Market In The Gut

The problem with mortgage fraud wasn’t broker compensation: it was the ease of the fraud and the incentives throughout the food chain for collusion. New Fed rules simply wipe out competitors to the “too big to fail” mortgage banks.

Why are we not surprised that the Fed took aim at [...]

What drives stock prices higher no matter what the state of the economy?

by TheRedPills

Over a year ago, one of the “experts” on a cable financial news show was challenged to find out who was buying US stocks that seemed to be invariably rising in prices day by day, without regard as to whether there was poor financial news, no news, or good news.

For a year this so-called expert tried to identify just who was purchasing, for instance, the stocks in the Dow [...]

Earnings Are Better Than Expected?

by Vics

I went through the earnings calendar at YAHOO and randomly picked some of the more widely known names. I had heard some of the reports throughout the week and others I hadn’t….but I was curious. How has the market reacted to the BTE? After all, it’s the reaction that counts. Below is my random sampling of some of the larger, [...]

The current economic disaster is the result of series of “it doesn’t matter”!

The current economic disaster is the result of the combination of negligence, hubris, and wrong economic theory. For decades, an economic and monetary policy has been practiced based on the illusion of, “It doesn’t matter.” At first it was, “Deficits don’t matter.” From that, the policy of “it doesn’t matter” got extended to money creation, the credit expansion, the stock-market bubble, and the housing boom. Now, we’re being told that [...]