Margin Debt

NYSE Margin Debt 1979 To Present

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By Mark J Lundeen – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

The Dow Jones Index in the BEV chart below closed this week a bit below last week’s close; 1.06% instead of last week’s 1.00%, down six cents on the dollar, or basically unchanged from last week.  As I said last week the bulls aren’t in a hurry, but I’m sure the bulls remain optimistic that the Dow Jones will make history sometime in the weeks and months to come.

What happens after that is the question.  Last October the Dow Jones made a handful of BEV Zero’s, and then began a three month 18% correction, as seen in the BEV chart below.

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Stock Market Investor Margin Debt Reaches New High

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By SRSrocco Report. – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com

The world is standing at the edge of the financial abyss while most investors are entirely in the dark.  However, specific indicators suggest the market is one giant RED BLINKING LIGHT.  One of these indicators is the amount of margin debt held by investors.  What is quite surprising about the level of investor margin debt is that it has hit a new record high even though the market has sold off 2,500 points from its peak in February.

It seems as if investors no longer believe in market cycles or fundamentals. Instead, the Wall Street saying that “This time is different” has become permanently ingrained in the market psychology.  For example, it doesn’t seem to matter to the market that Amazon makes no money on its massive online retail business.  The only segment of Amazon’s business that made a decent profit last quarter was from its Cloud hosting services.

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Things Are Lining Up Nicely For Gold And Silver

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com

Beginning in early Spring, gold and silver faced two serious headwinds: Seasonality – that is, the annual decline in bullion demand from China and India once wedding season ends – and the internal structure of the futures markets, where the big players in gold had lined up in ways that historically point towards weak prices for a while.

Both of these negatives are still in place (hence the smack-down of the past week) but both are transitioning to positive. At some point soon, the precious metals environment will lose the headwinds and gain at least two strong tailwinds.

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US Margin Debt Now Equal The Economy Of Taiwan

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By Graham Summers – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com

When Central Banks attempted to corner the sovereign bond market via ZIRP and QE, they forced ALL risk in the financial system to adjust lower.

Remember, in a fiat-based monetary system such as the one used by the world today, sovereign bonds NOT gold are the ultimate backstop for the financial system.

And for the US, which controls the reserve currency of the world, sovereign bonds, also called Treasuries, represent the “risk-free” rate of return for the entire world.

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Money Keeps Pouring In

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

Someday, stock, bond and real estate valuations will matter again. And the mechanism by which this return to sanity is achieved will probably be the torrent of money now flowing in from people who, for various reasons, don’t care about (or understand) the prices they’re paying.

Millennials, for instance, seem to have reached the “beginners’ mistakes” phase of their financial lives. They’re major buyers of recreational vehicles – see The Perfect Crash Indicator Is Flashing Red — and are now opening stock brokerage accounts at a startling pace:

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5 Reasons to Fear the Fall

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From http://www.PentoPort.com

This powerful and protracted bull market has made Cassandras look foolish for a long time. Those who went on record predicting that massive central bank manipulation of markets would not engender viable economic growth have been proven correct. However, these same individuals failed to fully anticipate the willingness of momentum-trading algorithms to take asset prices very far above the underlying level of economic growth.

Nevertheless, there are five reasons to believe that this fall will finally bring stock market valuations down to earth, and vindicate those who have displayed caution amidst all the frenzy.

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Stock Markets Sit Blithely on a Powerful Time Bomb

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By Wolf Richter – Re-Blogged From Wolf Street

No one knows the full magnitude, but it’s huge.

How big is margin debt really, and how much of a threat is it to the stock market and to “financial stability,” as central banks like to call their concerns about crashes? Turns out, no one really knows.

What we do know: Margin debt, as reported monthly by the New York Stock Exchange, spiked to another record high of $528 billion. But it’s only part of the total outstanding margin debt – which is when investors borrow money from their broker, pledging their portfolio as collateral.

An example of unreported margin debt: Robo-advisory Wealthfront, a so-called fintech startup overseeing nearly $6 billion, announced that it would offer its clients loans against their portfolios.

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Tactical Opportunity: Sell High, Buy Low

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By Nick Barisheff – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com

As Presented to the Empire Club of Canada Annual Investment Outlook Luncheon: Making Money in 2016 from Domestic and International Financial Markets

The market outlook for 2016 presents significant challenges and opportunities that we have not seen for 40 years.

Since I began work on creating our first bullion fund in 1998, I have generally restricted my commentary to using precious metals for strategic portfolio allocation. Everyone agrees that investment portfolios should be diversified. Since gold is the most non-correlated asset class to traditional financial assets it provides important portfolio diversification. A strategic allocation of at least 10 percent reduces portfolio risk and improves returns over the long term.

This year I’d like to discuss a tactical opportunity, a market disparity that exists because of an artificial low in the gold price, and an unsustainable high in financial assets. Everybody understands buy low and sell high. The opportunity for 2016 is to sell high, buy low.

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Bubbles Never Pop Painlessly

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By Michael Pento – Re-Bloged From http://www.Goldd-Eagle.com

Investors are obsessed over predicting the timing of the Fed’s first interest rate hike. Will it raise the Fed Funds rate in September, or wait until next year? But it is far more important to get a grasp on the pace of rate hikes. Will it be a one and done move, or does this mark the beginning of an incremental tightening cycle?  Those of us who are not in the inner circle are forced to only speculate.

But one thing is certain: If history is any guide, whatever they do the Fed will get it wrong.  Most market commentators place unfounded belief in the Fed’s acumen. But the truth is: I wouldn’t trust the Fed to tell me what the weather is going to do in the next 30 seconds–even if they were looking out the window.

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The Spread between Stock Prices and GDP is Blowing Out

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From http://www.pentoport.com

On a fundamental basis stock prices are reflective of both economic and earnings growth. When growth is strong, stock prices should increase in value. And when economic activity decelerates or turns negative, stock prices should go down. Of course nothing is that simple—especially today, when all markets are so highly manipulated by governments and central banks. Beginning in 2008 the markets followed the Fed on a magical journey down the rabbit hole into a wonderland where bad news is good news; and economic fundamentals and stock prices no longer move in tandem.

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NYSE Margin Debt At An All-Time Record High Heralds An Impending Stocks Crash

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By Doug Short – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silvr-Phoenix500.com

The astonishing surge in leverage (i.e. NYSE Margin Debt) in late 1999 peaked in March 2000, the same month that the S&P500 hit its all-time daily high, although the highest monthly close for that year was five months later in August. A similar surge NYSE Margin Debt began in 2006, peaking in July 2007, three months before the market peak…and subsequent crash.

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NYSE Margin Debt

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By Doug Short – Re-Blogged From http://www.advisorperspectives.com

The New York Stock Exchange publishes end-of-month data for margin debt on the NYXdata website, where we can also find historical data back to 1959. Let’s examine the numbers and study the relationship between margin debt and the market, using the S&P 500 as the surrogate for the latter.

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Margin Debt and Stock Prices

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cropped-bob-shapiro.jpg   By Bob Shapiro

Many investors who buy stocks try to increase their total returns by borrowing money for part of the purchase price. When this borrowing is from a stock brokerage and secured by all the stock in the transaction, this money is referred to as Margin Debt. If the price of the stock goes their way, they make a profit not only on the money they put up but also on the money they borrowed.

Of course, if the price goes against them, their loss is increased – but not by just as much. The stock bought on Margin will make or lose money depending on the price movement, but regardless, they have to pay interest on the loan. Investing on Margin is not for the faint of heart. Still, there is a lot of stock bought on Margin.

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