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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (206796)	7/16/2024 7:57:27 PM
From: Julius Wong	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 219433

Gold settles at all-time highs; Citi sees potential for continued gains to $3,000 Jul. 16, 2024 7:40 PM ET By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor monsitj/iStock via Getty Images Precious metals miners scored big gains in Tuesday's trading as gold futures settled at an all-time high following comments from Federal Reserve officials that ramped up expectations of a U.S. interest rate cut in September. Front-month Comex gold ( XAUUSD:CUR) for July delivery closed +1.6% to $2,462.40/oz, while front-month July silver ( XAGUSD:CUR) finished +1.7% to $31.195/oz. ETFs: (NYSEARCA: GLD), (NYSEARCA: GDX), ( GDXJ), ( IAU), ( NUGT), ( PHYS), ( GLDM), ( AAAU), ( SGOL), ( BAR), ( OUNZ), ( SLV), ( PSLV), ( SIVR), ( SIL), ( SILJ) Among the day's biggest stock market movers in the space: Harmony Gold ( HMY) +16.1%, DRDGold ( DRD) +10.8%, NovaGold ( NG) +6.3%, Gold Fields ( GFI) +6.2%, First Majestic Silver ( AG) +5.8%, MAG Silver ( MAG) +5.4%, SSR Mining ( SSRM) +5.3%, Sibanye Stillwater ( SBSW) +5.3%, Barrick Gold ( GOLD) +4.8%, Endeavour Silver ( EXK) +4.6%, Hecla Mining ( HL) +4.5%, Wheaton Precious Metals ( WPM) +4.4%, Pan American Silver ( PAAS) +4.2%, B2Gold ( BTG) +3.9%. Gold looks strongly bullish in the short term on growing expectations that the Fed will begin cutting U.S. interest rates in September, which were confirmed by commentary from Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Monday, which kept U.S. Treasury yields low and maintained positive outlooks for non-interest bearing bullion, XS.com analyst Rania Gule said, according to Dow Jones. "Gold surged to new all-time highs despite stronger than expected core retail sales data, encouraged by [Fed Chair] Powell indicating yesterday that the Fed was growing more confident that inflation was back on its way to target," independent metals trader Tai Wong told Reuters, which " essentially etches a September cut in stone barring an inflation calamity in the coming weeks." "Thanks largely to weakness in economic data, and falling inflationary pressures, bond yields are continuing to remain under pressure, [which] is helping to boost the appeal of low- and zero-yielding assets, and thereby keeping the gold outlook positive," City Index analyst Fawad Razaqzada said, according to Reuters. A report from Citi analysts suggests gold prices might keep surging all the way to $3,000/oz, as financial flows show potential for significant expansion. The weakening U.S. labor market, the broader trend of disinflation and a notably soft June CPI print strengthens the argument for a dovish pivot by the Fed at the upcoming July FOMC meeting, which "should be bullish for gold and silver into year-end," Citi said. The bank noted the impact of previous Fed cuts on precious metal prices, saying median annualized returns for precious metals were 13% in the six-month period following the first Fed cut across the past four cycles. Citi also emphasized the recent inflows into bullion ETFs, which posted net inflows in June for the first time in the trailing 12 months, with July continuing the trend, potentially foreshadowing "a critical reversal of a 43-month net de-stocking trend totaling some ~925 [tons]," suggesting a significant bullish turn for gold.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (206796)	7/17/2024 9:52:12 AM
From: ggersh	Respond to of 219433

Here we go again, only this time Jamie (criminal)Dimon will get a seat at the table, how wonderful zerohedge.com wallstreetonparade.com We can’t remember a time when the Chairman and CEO of the largest, most complex and scandal-ridden bank in the United States, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, was too busy to squeeze in an appearance at the company’s heavily-scrutinized quarterly earnings call with analysts. That happened last Friday. When something happens for the first time at a bank that has racked up five felony counts, has been doled out non-prosecution and deferred-prosecution agreements by the U.S. Department of Justice in a steady drumbeat since 2014, and spent most of last year in the headlines for a decade of sluicing tens of thousands of dollars per month in hard cash to the international sex trafficker of children, Jeffrey Epstein, it pays to sit up and pay attention. Reuters’ reporter John Foley also found it “unusual” that Dimon had missed the earnings call last Friday, writing that “neither throat cancer nor an aortic dissection” had stopped Dimon from being present at earnings calls in the past. The official excuse for the absence was that Dimon was travelling. Forgive us for the suspicion that Dimon might have wanted to avoid uncomfortable questions about the quality of the bank’s earnings this past quarter and what the bank had done with those earnings. The only bank official on the call with analysts was JPMorgan Chase’s CFO Jeremy Barnum, who got the sticky issue out of the way right up front. That issue was that $7.9 billion of net income came from a net gain on the sale of Visa stock, which the bank had held as an investment. Without that gain, profits would have been down compared to the same quarter a year ago. Barnum also fessed up to the fact that the bank had used $4.9 billion of its net income to buy back JPMorgan Chase’s own stock – something that Dimon has turned into an art form at the bank. From January 1, 2014 through June 30, 2024, Dimon has plowed the astronomical sum of $124.5 billion into buying back the bank’s own stock. There are three critical facts you need to understand about using bank profits to buy back the company’s own stock. First, when earnings are retained as opposed to being used for buybacks, they increase the capital of the bank, making megabanks far less susceptible to needing bailouts. Dimon has been bullying his federal bank regulators this year and holding high-powered meetings in Washington in an effort to get his regulators to back off their demands for JPMorgan Chase (and other megabanks) to increase their capital. While Dimon likes to brag about his bank’s “fortress balance sheet,” bank regulators know all too well that something blew up in the fourth quarter of 2019, necessitating JPMorgan Chase needing $2.59 trillion in emergency repo loans from the Fed on a term-adjusted basis, in just that one quarter. (See chart below.) The second thing you need to understand is that stock buybacks are prudently done when the stock is considered undervalued, and thus represents a good investment. JPMorgan Chase’s stock has been trading at its highest level in history in the past quarter. And, finally, federally-insured/taxpayer backstopped banks like JPMorgan Chase are supposed to be making loans to sound businesses and consumers in order to grow the U.S. economy and create good jobs – not blowing their profits on propping up their share price to make the CEO look good to his Board of Directors so he can get fat bonuses. In July of 2017, Thomas Hoenig, then Vice Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), sent a letter to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. He made the following points: “[If] the 10 largest U.S. Bank Holding Companies [BHCs] were to retain a greater share of their earnings earmarked for dividends and share buybacks in 2017 they would be able to increase loans by more than $1 trillion, which is greater than 5 percent of annual U.S. GDP. “Four of the 10 BHCs will distribute more than 100 percent of their current year’s earnings, which alone could support approximately $537 billion in new loans to Main Street. “If share buybacks of $83 billion, representing 72 percent of total payouts for these 10 BHCs in 2017, were instead retained, they could, under current capital rules, increase small business loans by three quarters of a trillion dollars or mortgage loans by almost one and a half trillion dollars.” Another troubling aspect of Dimon missing his earnings call last Friday is that he did something else quite noteworthy this year for the first time. He sold a very large chunk of his stock in the bank. In February, Dimon sold $150 million of JPMorgan Chase stock and another $32.8 million in April, bringing his total sales this year to $182.8 million.