Crude oil volatility surged to its highest in almost two months as turmoil across financial markets prompts speculators to sell futures contracts. Oil’s 30-day historical volatility, a measure of how much crude fluctuates around its average price during that period, jumped 53 percent from near a three-year low in mid-April. Hedge fund managers and other [...]

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HE markets for most risk-related trades, from equities to oil to commodity currencies, are likely to push higher in the first quarter on ultra-low interest rates, still ample liquidity, and continued economic recovery. The key factors that are likely to determine whether the rally continues in 2010 include economic recovery, liquidity, interest rates, corporate earnings [...]

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Are overly bullish investors blindly driving stocks higher and taking you for a ride? After weak earnings from Alcoa [AA  15.52   -1.93  (-11.06%)   ]and a warning from Chevron [CVX  80.36   -0.52  (-0.64%)   ], investors are starting to worry that all is not right on Wall Street. Doug Kass of Seabreeze is among the growing number of strategists that thinks there’s [...]

commodity, Interest rates, stock market, trading strategy, unemployment, US Hide

The U.S. economy will slip back into recession in the second and third quarter of 2010 as the boost from fiscal stimulus measures and inventory rebuilding wears off, James Shugg, senior economist at Westpac Bank, told CNBC Wednesday. “In the second half of this year, starting in the second quarter, a bit of a mismatch [...]

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Commentary by John Dorfman Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) – From 1999 through early 2007, I compiled a quarterly Casualty List of banged-up stocks that I believed had good rebound potential. I’m resurrecting this idea. Here is the Fourth Quarter 2009 Casualty List, focusing on stocks that are down 15 percent or more for the quarter as [...]

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By Genevieve Cua, 11 Dec 2009, The Business Times A US-BASED professor yesterday slammed the financial industry for perpetuating investment ‘fallacies’ that do little to educate retail investors about risk and return.These fallacies include the oft- repeated maxim that diversification reduces risk, and that risky assets such as stocks become safer as the holding period [...]

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As we see the futures getting hammered on the Dubai news, it’s important torevisit market sentiment. As we noted last week, sentiment had become extremely lopsided. The AAII reported their latest bull/bear data Thursday and the latest reading on bullish investors reached levels seen on rare occasion over the last year. We have seen just 4 readings [...]

stock market, trading strategy, US Hide

In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems. Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether [...]

forex, inflation, Interest rates, stock market, trading strategy, US Hide

It is difficult to ignore the many advertisements in the newspapers these days offering different ways to create wealth from the stock and property markets. That millionaires seem to have made their money in such ways is a big draw for many. One advert claimed: ‘Our graduate made 7,700 per cent profit and turned $1,000 [...]

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SHE’s a 27-year-old whose job it is to advise bank clients and sell them investment products. Her job title is bank relationship manager. But, going by her own investments, she now jokingly refers to herself as a “relationship damager”. Reason: She’s lost about $90,000 of her own money in the stock market. And she managed [...]

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