Posts Tagged ‘U.S. housing market’
As Investors Flee Gold ETFs, Central Banks Jump in as Bigger Gold Buyers
By Michael Lombardi, MBA for Profit Confidential
While mainstream financial and a growing number of economic forecasters focus on investors fleeing the gold bullion market, I am following in the footsteps of central banks around the world…
Investors pulled out a record amount of money from gold bullion-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) this past February. A total of $4.1 billion was withdrawn from gold bullion ETFs last month, the largest single-month outflow since January of 2011. (Source: ETF Trends, March 6, 2013.)
Gold investors fled the market on speculation that gold bullion prices will plummet, as the metal’s future looks anything but bright—the theory being the global economy is improving and central banks will need to pull back on their easy monetary policies.
But, as investors sold ETFs in February, central banks around the world added to their gold bullion reserves.
South Korea added another 20 metric tons of gold bullion to its holdings in February—raising its gold reserves by 24% to 104.4 tons. Since June of 2011, South Korea has purchased gold bullion five times. (Source: Bloomberg, March 6, 2013.)
Similarly, central banks from Russia and Kazakhstan have been increasing their gold bullion holdings as the prices go down. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Russian central bank purchased 12.2 tons of gold bullion in January.
As the World Gold Council cites, central banks across the world ramped up their gold bullion buying; they bought 534.6 tons last year, 17% more than the previous year.
Dear reader, when you have the former biggest sellers of gold bullion, central banks, turning into buyers, it is nothing less than a bullish indicator.
What holds … Read More
Short Sales and Foreclosure Jump to 20% of Home Sales; Institutions Support Housing Market with Major Buying
By Michael Lombardi, MBA for Profit Confidential
The chart below is the S&P Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index.
Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com
From the S&P Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index, we can see that home prices are still down almost 30% from their peak in early 2007.
As the chart shows, a little change in home prices doesn’t really mean recovery in the housing market. On average, home prices in the U.S. economy will have to go up about 42% for the people presently living with negative equity in their homes to break even. This much of a recovery could be far away for the U.S. housing market…
According to RealtyTrac, foreclosures in the U.S. housing market dropped seven percent to 150,864 in January from the previous month. One in every 869 homes in the U.S. housing market was on the verge of foreclosure in January. (Source: RealtyTrac, February 12, 2013.)
And, according to real estate research firm CoreLogic, in October of 2012, foreclosures accounted for 11.5% of total home sales. In the same period of 2011, they accounted for 17.3%. But in the same period when foreclosures declined, short sales climbed from 10.4% to 8.4% of all sales. (Source: Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2013.)
Short sales, where a homeowner sells his/her home for less than the mortgage and the bank takes the loss, have taken up the slack in foreclosures! Add to this the fact that first-time home buyers are not present in the U.S. housing market rebound while institutional investors are buying single-family homes in bulk and renting them, and all of a sudden the U.S. housing market rebound is questionable.
There … Read More
The Fed’s Running the Show and Risk Keeps Going Up
By Mitchell Clark, B.Comm. for Profit Confidential
There just isn’t enough real economic growth out there for a rising stock market—at least not much more than has already been achieved. News from the Federal Reserve of the central bank considering how to end quantitative easing sent the stock market much lower, revealing just how artificial the whole system is.
I actually think the current stock market is fairly valued, but it shouldn’t be going up in value with modest revenues and earnings growth. The Federal Reserve is the catalyst for today’s trading action, but first-quarter earnings season will be a catalyst for investor sentiment. Some companies and industries are doing better than others. The choppy recovery in the U.S. economy is now being reflected in earnings results, as corporations can no longer cut any more costs. Revenue growth is now the key.
On the release of the minutes from the Federal Reserve meeting, stock markets around the world sold off, literally. All the positive action so far this year has been incredibly tenuous, and the low trading volume said it all. I think we’re now in a mini-correction, induced by recent news from the Federal Reserve, although it won’t be a market-breaking pullback.
Right now, the prospects for gold, silver, and oil are terrible, and the near-term action in resource stocks is headed downward. We also have a lot of solid, dividend paying large-caps that are trading right near their highs and are due for a break.
It’s odd that the stock market reacted so negatively to the Federal Reserve’s latest news. Investors have been complaining about all the easy money and artificially low interest rates. … Read More
Approved; Unlimited Credit Line for the Most Debt-Infested Country
By Michael Lombardi, MBA for Profit Confidential
Would you lend money to a person who is unemployed, whose assets are declining, and who is heavily in debt? Even a person with minimal knowledge of finance would say, “No, thanks.”
But, the opposite of this happened in the U.S. economy on January 23, 2013, when Congress passed a bill “temporarily” suspending the limit of how much the government can borrow.
This bill gives the U.S. government the right to borrow without limits until May of this year. It’s like giving an unlimited line of credit to a person who doesn’t have the means to pay it back.
The original idea behind a government “debt limit” in the U.S. economy was to put a limit on how much the federal government could borrow so our national debt didn’t get out of control. So much for that idea!
If you thought $16.4 trillion was a lot of debt, the U.S. government just got approved for an unlimited line of credit with no background check.
Most investors have no idea how big a Ponzi scheme the U.S. economy has become. The government spends money it doesn’t have; it then issues T-Bills to sell to anyone who will loan them money, and the Federal Reserve then buys most of those T-Bills with money it creates out of thin air.
The Federal Reserve, which started buying $45.0 billion of U.S. bonds in January, has been working hard, printing more money and keeping the U.S. economy afloat artificially. In the most recent update on its balance sheet, the Federal Reserve revealed that it holds almost $1.7 trillion worth of U.S. bonds, while its balance … Read More
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