The Traderszone Network

There’s a simple reason why the shock 2.9% plunge in first-quarter growth should largely be ignored: companies are hiring.
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ByAbba’s Aces:

The last time I wrote about AT&T Inc. (T), I stated, “Due to the low earnings growth expectations, bearish technicals, and earnings contraction expectations I will not be pulling the trigger on this name right now.” The stock has “popped” 0.97% versus the 4.73% gain the S&P 500 (SPY) posted during that time frame. It’s safe to say that the decision was an okay one to make at the time.

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Submitted by Andy Sirkis via The Ludwig von Mises Institute,

Despite claims to the contrary in the mass media, Japan’s economy is continuing to suffer mightily under the leadership of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Abe is from a famous family and he’s a convincing talker, so he was able to bamboozle people into believing that he could make Japan prosper with his three arrows. These metaphorical arrows stand for “monetary stimulus,” “fiscal stimulus,” and “structural reform.”

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It is no secret that the extremist al-Qaeda Jihadist group known as ISIS for short, which in the span of weeks has overrun the northern part of Iraq, has grand ambitions to not only preserve its power in the north and central regions, as well as the border with Syria, but to ultimately proceed south where not only Baghdad is located but also the great energy infrastructure of the country: “the grand prize” for ISIS as it would make the extremist group viable and financially self-sustaining.

But how and when will this “Battle for Baghdad” take place?

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For a week or two, the ‘news’ appeared to confirm the ‘hope’; faith that Q1’s dysphoria would emerge phoenix-like into Q2 euphoria as a ‘hibernating’ American public emerging from their weather-shelter and spent-spent-spent all their borrowed-borrowed-borrowed money. That ended last week! Despite the dramatically low volume liftathon in stocks since the FOMC meeting, major risk markets around the world are cracking. European bonds and stocks had a bad week, Treasuries rallied the most in 6 weeks, and the key to it all, USDJPY, slipped to 4 week lows. Why?

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With rumors flying that MediaTek or the Chinese government will be picking up Broadcom’s cellular division, it seems unlikely that Apple will be interested.

By now it is widely known that with the VIX cratering to levels not seen since 2007, and the “old” VIX, the one based on OEX calls and puts, plunging to record low, complacency, confidence (in the Fed’s central planning) and a lack of any fear is pervasive.

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