Money Flow Trading Method along with Risk Management

All my positions are now closed and my last one was Limit Out at $500 US Dollars.

I thought of the fact that the approximate ratio between Dow 30 (US 30) and SPX500 is about 8 to 1.

Therefore when Dow is down 120 points then SPX500 is down around 15.

So... now for sure our Trade Plan should be changed to One position or up to Three positions of only 50 units for SHORT SPX500.

Another SCREENSHOT in the AM will show how I made my 6 profits on my Two Trade Plans.

$74,593.16 US Dollars - Is that Good ? Net Profit - $2493 US Dollars Today in Profits







Any questions ?

My balance is approaching $75,000 US Dollars and of course KeepCalmfx is doing great.

Bravo KeepCalmfx


Benjaminis

WELL INDEED - NO SURPRISE FOR ME - DISGRACEFUL - I LIKE THE JUDGE

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...ops+to+zero%29

Report: British Intelligence Agencies, In Addition to Six Other Nations, Were All Spying on Trump
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...ure-234204.jpg
by The_Real_Fly
Apr 13, 2017 7:03 PM



About a month ago, Fox suspended Judge Nap for suggesting British intelligence had spied on Donald Trump. The media went hysterical, saying the good judge was filled with UFO styled conspiracy theories.

Here was his claim.


A spokesman for the GCHQ at the time called the claims 'nonsense', proclaiming “They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”


Lo and behold, the Guardian is out with an exclusive tonight -- rebuking the GCHQ denial -- confirming that Obama had received information from the British spy agency, possibly to avoid being detected by people investigating FISA warrants. In addition to Britain's GCHQ, Mi6 was also involved, and 4 other nations -- as part of the intelligence gathering apparatus called SIGINT -- who then ferried their findings to Obama. The spying nations were Germany, Estonia, Poland and Australia.



Another guardian source said both France and the Netherlands were possible contributors to the Trump spying ring too.

CNN reporting:


The GCHQ became aware of 'suspicious interactions' in late 2015.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

It is understood that GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information. The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.

In typical spin, the Guardian's source posited the notion that something improper had taken place between the Russians and Trump.

“It looks like the [US] agencies were asleep,” the source added. “They [the European agencies] were saying: ‘There are contacts going on between people close to Mr Trump and people we believe are Russian intelligence agents. You should be wary of this.’

“The message was: ‘Watch out. There’s something not right here.’”

The Guardian claims the GCHQ head, Robert Hannigan, passed the information in the summer of 2016 to the CIA boss, John Brennan. In turn, Brennan told the 'gang of eight' in the House and Senate that there was evidence Russia was trying to swing the election towards Trump, then reported by the NYT.

According to the Guardian, intelligence agencies were progressing in their attempts to tie the hacking of John Podesta's email box, Russia, and the Trump team.


“They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion,” the source said. “This is between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material.”

We eagerly await their findings.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

COMMENTS FROM BENJAMINIS: PERCEPTION = FALSE FACTS - REALITY = TRUTH VERIFIED

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...ops+to+zero%29

CIA Director Smears Wikileaks After Tweeting Them During 2016 Election
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...ure-240135.png
by William Craddick
Apr 13, 2017 6:36 PM




CIA Director Mike Pompeo blasted Wikileaks during an event held by the Center for Strategic & International Studies today, despite having promoted the publisher's leaks in 2016 to attack political opponents during the U.S. Presidential elections.

Pompeo took an extremely hard line with the publishing giant, labelling them a "non-state hostile intelligence service" before repeating the baseless contention that Wikileaks was abetted by the Russian Federation, despite FBI Director James Comey's assertion in late March that Wikileaks has never dealt directly with the Russian government.

Pompeo further stated that the Russian media outlet Russia Today (RT) had actively collaborated with Wikileaks, and that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was a narcissist and a fraud "hiding behind a computer screen." Mr. Assange is currently residing in Ecuador’s London Embassy, where he has been held in de-facto captivity since August 2012 after being granted asylum by Ecuador.

On April 6, 2016 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Assange’s detention was unlawful. They ordered that he be released immediately and compensated by Sweden and the United Kingdom for the roles these states played in his captivity.

Director Pompeo's comments are ironic given that during the 2016 election, he was happy to publicize Wikileaks' release of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails which proved that the DNC had been committing election fraud during the Democratic primary race and improperly communicating with members of the American media.

Pompeo tweeted about about the release and accused then President Barack Obama of being complicit in the primary fraud and collusion with the press.
http://disobedientmedia.com/wp-conte...M-1024x799.png
Wikileaks highlighting a tweet from Mike Pompeo during the he was serving as a United States Representative promoting Wikileaks releases

The apparent policy flip by Pompeo comes after Wikileaks began to release their Vault 7 series of leaks, showing that the CIA has been improperly accessing the personal electronic devices of Americans, was concealing known exploits from product manufacturers, utilizes false attribution techniques allowing them to conceal their hacking attacks by portraying them as coming from another country and uses tools which appear to have been developed by Russian criminal organizations.

COMMENTS FROM BENJAMINIS: President Trump should FIRE Comey and get rid of many of the DOUBLE SPYS that work for the President. So far Trump has been rarely wrong. That is my opinion and the facts back it up.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...ops+to+zero%29

America, The Waning Days
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau.../picture-5.jpg
by Tyler Durden
Apr 13, 2017 6:05 PM




Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
Potential earthquakes and black swans are right ahead of us. What else is new?


On April 16, Turkey has a referendum to decide whether Erdogan will become de facto supreme ruler. What happens if he loses the referendum is completely unclear, undiscussed even, but it’s obvious a loss would have the country shake on its already shaky foundations.


The Turkish economy is in horrible shape and Erdogan’s post-coup firings (hundreds of thousands) and jailings (tens of thousands) have made large parts of society unattended. The biggest of which may well be the army; you can’t fire large numbers of officers and pilots and expect to retain the same strike effectiveness.


Erdogan’s ongoing war on the Kurds is also turning against him, or at least internationally. Both Russia and the US acknowledge the important role Kurdish forces play in the battle against ISIS, and they’re not going to turn against them. So while Turkey demands a major role in neighboring Syria, it has essentially been put off-side, or benched.


Russia maintains (some of) its boycotts of Turkish products ($260 million worth of tomatoes) that were the result of Erdogan downing a Russian jet in late 2015, and the refuses to deliver arch-enemy Gülen, despite Michael Flynn’s best efforts. This means, by the way, that the country simply hasn’t provided irrefutable proof of the man’s role in the coup (if it was ever a real coup).


If Erdogan cannot come up a winner on Sunday, he would lose a lot of face. And he might lose more than that. Of course one must question if it’s even a option that the Turkish people vote NO, and that that would subsequently be announced as the referendum result. He controls just about anything in the country already; why not this too, by right or by might?!


Second black swan: France. It could be a genuine black one, as in unexpected. Less than two weeks before the first round of the presidential election, all of a sudden another contender has come to the fore. Far left Jean-Luc Mélenchon was never given any chance of winning, but one TV debate later his popularity is rising fast.

The French have long been tired of their political system, and this time around that could mean all established parties are out. Even perhaps including Emmanuel Macron, who doesn’t belong to a party but is still perceived as a member of the establishment, no matter how hard he tries not to be.


Come round two on May 7, voters might be faced with the -stark- choice between far left and far right, with a big gaping empty hole in between. That would leave no option of a ‘safe choice’, the big hope of everyone who doesn’t like Marine Le Pen. It would also leave no candidate who unwaveringly supports the euro or even the EU.


In fact, it’s ironic -make that funny- to what extent far left and far right ideas ‘meet in the middle’. Add to the irony that Melenchon’s rise makes a Le Pen presidency that much more likely, because a ‘communist’ is seen as at least as dangerous as Le Pen. That might give her the undecided votes she will need to prevail.


US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Moscow, he’s way out of his league, and he knows it. His task is, if you read between the lines, to deliver warnings and threats to Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, but both are not only at least as smart as Rex, they have the many years of experience in international politics that he woefully lacks.


The White House issued a ‘we can prove it was Assad, and it was sarin’ report yesterday, but they can not. The sarin accusation even makes little sense given the photos of people attending to the victims with bare hands. Accusing Russia of being complicit in Assad attacking his own people with gas/chemicals doesn’t really fly either.


Tillerson said earlier in the week that Russia is either ‘incompetent or complicit’, that it should have made sure Assad had no chemical arsenal. But a 2013 treaty between the US and Russia established a UN body, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), that is responsible for that. And the US is part of that body, and as such co-responsible.


And yes, there will be people saying that Russia delivered chemical capacity to Assad despite the treaty. But why should it? That question falls into the same category as why Assad would use chemicals to begin with at this point in time. It makes no sense, there is no logic. But then in the US logic has been in short supply for a while, certainly when politics are concerned.


Tillerson apparently was told to tell Russia that it has to stop supporting Assad or else, but that is just real dumb. Syria is Russia’s only haven in the Middle East, and there’s no chance they will give it up. And why should they? Would the world be a better place if the US can do whatever it wants in the region?

Haven’t the utterly failed regime changes in Iraq and Libya done enough damage?


Sure, Assad may be a shaky asset. But what about the Saudi’s and their western-supported obliteration of the entire nation and peoples of Yemen? Want to look at some pictures that can drive Ivanka to tears? You won’t see them in your media, and neither will she. It’s all just biased nonsense, and by now it’s hard to see how Trump will find his own way in, let alone find his way out of, this foreign swamp.

Threatening Russia is certainly not that way. But sure, the President must feel eager to disprove the unproven non-stop allegations of collaboration between him and Putin. And the one-sided attacks did indeed stop only when the bombs started to fall. It’s all so predictable it makes you want to puke all over your morning paper all over every single morning, Groundhog Day style.

The New York Times was awarded a Pulitzer for “agenda-setting reporting on Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Russia’s power abroad”. I kid you not. The American press has lost all concerns about its own credibility, and the Pulitzers follow them with a vengeance. And that same press did a weather-vane like 180 as soon as 59 Tomahawks were aimed and fired at an abandoned airport in the sand.


They were anti-Trump mongers the whole time, and changed like a leaf on a tree in seconds, to become pro-war mongers. It’s something to behold. They love him! The starkest example, among too many to keep count of, was presented in a publication named The Hill, which we are apparently supposed to take serious. It’s just another WaPo and NYT clone, but this thing by “General Anthony J. Tata, Opinion Contributor” sums it all up too nicely to ignore:

Trump’s Adherence To American Values Demonstrates His Commitment To Protecting Us

In the wake of Tuesday’s Syrian chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians, President Barack Obama will be remembered as America’s modern day Neville Chamberlain, the infamous United Kingdom Prime Minister who appeased Nazi Germany in 1938 by signing the Munich Agreement, setting the stage for the holocaust. Contrast Obama’s negligence with President Donald Trump’s decisive action a mere two days following the Syrian violation of international law. The Syrian government used chemicals to brutalize its citizens in Khan Sheikhoun.

President Trump immediately denounced the attacks, labeling them, “An affront to humanity.” Less than 72 hours later he ordered the launch of 60 cruise missiles to destroy the airfield from which the bomb delivering airplanes departed. If Obama’s passivity in the face of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) deployed in Syria in 2013 lends to Chamberlain comparisons, President Donald Trump’s military action against Syria this week compares favorably to Winston Churchill, Chamberlain’s effective wartime successor.

Just as Chamberlain and Churchill viewed Nazi Germany differently, how could two modern day American presidents see essentially the same horrifying pictures of chemical weapons attack victims and come to two decidedly different conclusions about their terror and an effective response?

Jarring images of Tuesday’s sarin nerve agent attack on its citizens that circulated the world this week were similar to those that went viral in 2013: bodies torqued in gruesome death poses, patients oozing bodily fluids from their mouths and noses, and children running blind through the streets. In 2013, an unimpressed President Obama found a passive, ineffective diplomatic solution relying on unreliable Russian oversight. Syria obviously maintained and built its weapons of mass destruction stockpiles. The United Nations was even in on the deal, declaring that there were no more chemical weapons in Syria.


There’s so much stupidity and mendacity in that, you really have to take some time out to let it sink in. But it’s also very representative of American media these days. CNN, WaPo, NYT, they’re all full of people who by now must feel really shortchanged because Trump hasn’t dropped many more bombs on Syria, and they’re more than willing not to show us the pictures of the children those bombs would maim and kill. After all, how many pictures have you seen of Yemen’s death and famine?



When Trump told Maria Bartiromo that “we’re not going into Syria”, you can bet your buttocks lots of executives behind the desks there were thinking of one thing only: how do we get him to do it anyway? They still have hope there’ll be a major war soon, I guarantee you that.


But Putin is not going to move an inch, not on Syria and not on anything else. He knows the US army can do a lot of damage, but it can’t win. It hasn’t won an actual war in many decades, and it won’t win this one either if whoever’s in Washington decides to start it.

Before I started writing this I was thinking about Rip van Winkle rather than Groundhog Day. The whole media 180, and the war cries, are exactly like they were in 2003. Now, Rip van Winkle allegedly slept for 20 years, not 14, but hey, details. The cute thing about the Rip van Winkle story is also in the details:
When he awakens, Van Winkle discovers shocking changes: his musket is rotting and rusty, his beard is a foot long, and his dog is nowhere to be found. He returns to his village, where he recognizes no one. Van Winkle returns just after an election, and people are asking how he voted. (Wikipedia)


That election thing is priceless. But Rip woke up to find his entire world completely changed. Whereas today’s hollow US war talk is something we’ve seen before, and many times. That’s more Groundhog Day style. There must be a way to connect the two stories in a way that fits today’s reality. Whoever finds it is in Hollywood blockbuster territory.


War is far too popular in America. It’s scary. Not least of all because the US has zero chance of winning. For the same reasons, by the by, that it can’t fix its health care system.


America as a country, a society, is not effective enough anymore to win anything, there’s no chance of a concerted effort, it’s too inward looking and distracted by TV-shaped reality and ‘social’ media, and its entire society is aimed only at maximizing profit at the expense of one’s own neighbors. America has turned into cats in a sack.


But yes, these are often the most dangerous times in the existence of an empire. The waning days. The downward slope. The swans that will pop up in that are definitely black; there’s no predicting those graceful beauties.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...ops+to+zero%29

Lust For War
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau.../picture-5.jpg
by Tyler Durden
Apr 13, 2017 8:10 PM



Authored by Taylor Lewis via Mises Canada,
Mr. Trump has gone to war.


It seems like only yesterday the braggart billionaire denounced former president George W. Bush for lying about the presence of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq in order to goad us into invasion. “Obviously the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump said, to whoops and hollers during a primary debate in South Carolina.


Well, that was fun while it lasted. Somewhere between taking potshots against saber-rattling on Twitter, Trump turned his back on his non-interventionist self and sent nearly 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles crashing into Shayrat Airfield in Homs, Syria.


The casus belli? Paying back Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for using sarin gas on his own people, killing scores of civilians, including children. The pictures of young ones choked to death on poisonous fumes understandably rattled the president. Before approving the airstrike, Trump told reporters, “that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me — big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing.”


The damage inflicted to the Syrian airbase was minimal, but that didn’t stop a deluge of plaudits from Washington’s eminences. The capital city’s establishment—editors, politicians, news anchors, mega-donors, think tank operators, intellectuals, corporate heads—all congratulated Trump for stepping firmly into his role as commander-in-chief and acting decisively.


The Senate’s twin warmongers, senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, released a joint statement heralding the attack. A handful of Democrats celebrated Trump’s strike, including some of his biggest critics. The press, which has been relentless in its unfavorable coverage of the president, had a collective orgasm over the destruction.


“For the first time really as president, he talked about international norms, international rules, about America’s role in enforcing justice in the world,” exclaimed CNN host and noted plagiarist Fareed Zakaria. “This seemed like a very different Donald Trump. More serious–and clearly moved emotionally.

Frequently invoked the Almighty.” tweeted commentator Matt Lewis. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a prominent Trump critic, defended the president, penning a post titled “Trump Was Right to Strike Syria.”


By far the strangest praise President Trump received was from former-NBC heavyweight, now MSNBC wrap-up anchor Brian Williams.
Despite being a vehement Trump detractor, Williams was awed by the missile launch. “We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two UN Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean,” he said on his show “The 11th Hour.”

Then came the wonderstruck: “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’ They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them what is a brief flight over to this airfield.”

Williams finding transcendent beauty in Pentagon-released videos showing cruise missiles flying effortlessly through the air like elegantly guided kites, emitting trails of soft clouds, all against the backdrop of a night sky punctuated by flashing images of the American flag, was too much for his fellow liberals. Even some conservatives were unnerved.

The Williams remark, despite its macabre underpinning, was revealing. Our political elites derive great meaning from war. Trump’s domestic agenda has been pure buffoonery to kingmakers along the Potomac. But launching missiles at an airbase of a country that poses no risk to U.S. citizens? Well, now, that’s a serious endeavor, undertaken by only the most consequential of individuals.


Why is this? Why do media chatter mouths and political sycophants sublimate war to a status of near-holy importance? Hemingway said there is “nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying” in modern warfare. Men “die like a dog for no good reason.” So what good is there in waxing eloquently on the honor and sacrifice demanded by war?


It’s too easy to chalk it up to pecuniary concerns; though it is the case that many American conflicts have been fomented by financial interests.


But reading the perennial “Return to National Greatness” column by quintessential meaning-seeker David Brooks, you get a sense that the cheerleaders of American military might seek something bigger than just kicking up sand in Mesopotamia. They want vindication for Pax Americana–a sense that their nation’s existence matters in world events and that they themselves play a small part in that preeminence.


It reminds me of Hannah Jelkes’s rumination in Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana. When comforting the manic Rev. Shannon back to sanity and faith, Jelkes pinpoints the provenance of his problem: “The oldest one in the world–the need to believe in something or in someone—almost anyone—almost anything…something.”

The pundits who gaze admiringly at flaring rockets scorching black sky, who bask in the aura of prestige emanating from a man acting alone to destroy, who flatter those with resolve to respond without second-guessing in less-than-clear circumstances, they all yearn for deliverance from modernity’s restless monotony.


In an interview with Vox.com last year, author Sebastian Junger outlined why returning veterans are recalcitrant to adapting back to American society. When soldiers travel overseas, they tend to revert back to our ancient lifestyle of close-knit living and communal priorities. When they return, they have to assimilate back into to a “fragmented, alienated society.” Junger explains: “I wasn’t a soldier, I’m not a veteran, but the impression I get from talking to them is that their sense of purpose and their sense of devotion to a common good is foremost in their minds in combat.”


That sense of purpose is similarly felt by those enraptured by the pound of war drums. Thanks to mass media, you don’t have to pick up a gun and blast a few jihadists to experience the ennobling glories of battle. You can pontificate about it on TV, read about it in a book, and watch as your tax dollars fund a fusillade that levels a town.


Without an identity rooted in shared ethnicity, religion, or history, the next best thing that brings people together is a fight to the death. With no God to worship, men invariably worship the feeling of their own supremacy, reflected in their capacity for engineered extermination. This, I think, is at the heart of the bloodlust exhibited by the Washington class.

They have nothing to believe in but they’re own slaughter.

Comments from Benjaminis: This EMPIRE will be gone by 2020 !!! We will see soon and DEBT CEILING is April 28, 2017 in 15 days and the Senate needs 60 Votes for approval. Maybe this is why President Trump has reversed all his positions including liking The Wicked Witch... Is She Wicked ? You decide SO...

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-new...risis_04132017

Peter Schiff Warns: “Nothing Has Changed Under Trump… We’re Headed For A Major Crisis”
Mac Slavo
April 13th, 2017
SHTFplan.com







When Donald Trump was elected, there was so much optimism among libertarians and conservatives, it was almost palpable. However, it’s only been several months into his first term, and it’s becoming quite apparent that Trump is no savior. In retrospect, it was foolish to think any single person could snap his fingers, and reverse decades of financial mismanagement and political corruption. It was foolish to think that he could dismantle an entrenched bureaucracy that is more powerful than most people realize.


But not everyone was convinced that Trump was going to be able to turn this ship around. Peter Schiff knew that the damage done by the political establishment was irreversible, and that our financial system was living on borrowed time. In a recent interview with Future Money Trends, Schiff explains why Donald Trump can’t stop the inevitable, and how you can crash proof your assets ahead of the economic pain that is coming:
Donald trump should already be disappointing a lot of people who thought we were going to get change, we were going to make America great again. We didn’t repeal Obamacare, that’s here to stay. Major tax reform is dead. We’re dropping bombs.


I mean it’s the same old same old right? Big government… bigger deficits… more cheap money… keep the air in the bubble. We’re headed for a major major crisis.

Watch the full interview with Peter Schiff:

(Watch At Youtube)

As for what that major crisis will be, it’s not what most people would expect. As Schiff points out, it’s not going to be triggered by one sector of the economy, as we saw in during the last financial crash. The crisis is going to emerge with the dollar itself, which Schiff says could cause precious metal prices to soar. Everyone is taking for granted the fact that the dollar is king, but it’s not going to be for long. Not when our government continues to rack up debt like a compulsive gambler; which at this point, doesn’t appear to be changing under Trump.


The dollar is living on borrowed time, literally. And so we just don’t know. It’s like a bomb with a fuse, but we just don’t really know how long the fuse is. The dollar, I think is in a major bubble. I think it is in the process of topping out. I think once it completes this top it’s going down. And I think it’s going to take out the lows from 2008…


…I think it’s going to go down for the count. Because the last time, what saved the dollar was the financial crisis, and that crisis resulted in everybody buying the dollar. But I think the next crisis is not going to be the same crisis that we had in 08. I think the dollar is going to be the crisis. I don’t think it’s going to be a bread and butter financial crisis. This is going to be a currency crisis. So it’s going to be the US government. It’s not going to be the mortgage markets that’s blowing up. It’s going to be the treasury bond market that’s blowing up. It’s going to be the Federal Reserve that’s blowing up. And this is going to be a major major negative for the dollar, not a positive.


We really don’t know how long that fuse is, but there’s no doubt that it’s been lit. There is a frustrating truism in economics. You can easily predict if something bad is going to happen, but you can never predict when it’s going to happen.


That’s because the economy is built on numbers that are easy to calculate, but it’s impossible to predict how people will react to those numbers. In our case, people don’t want to believe that this economy is built on a house of cards and that their standard of living is in jeopardy. That willful ignorance, that confidence, can keep the show going long after the curtain should have been drawn. However, no amount of confidence can keep an unsustainable system running forever. Eventually, reality becomes impossible to ignore.


Trump doesn’t want to preside over a major decline in our standard of living, but ultimately that has to happen. Because this is the consequence of all this excess consumption that went on before he was president.

You know, we sacrificed our future to indulge our past. The future is now the present. We’re here, and it’s time to pay the piper.


There’s only one thing you can do, according to Peter Schiff. Prepare yourself and your family with real assets like gold and silver that will keep your finances afloat during the next currency crisis.

Comments from Benjaminis: Have a good evening or morning and always smell the roses just in case a BOMB BUSTER lands on your head. I am really happy that I live In Montreal, Quebec, Canada and say South Korea !!! That does not mean that I have no empathy for South Korea and North Korea. Maybe a UNIQUE IDEA ? Why do China and South Korea and North Korea and the USA call an emergency summit and the Florida White House and if nothing works just Poison Him.... No Not President Trump - The good friend of Denis Rodman. Hey invite Denis as well....

http://wolfstreet.com/2017/04/13/cha...nce-2009-2010/

Restaurants in Worst Tailspin since 2009/2010
by Wolf Richter • Apr 13, 2017 •


This thermometer for discretionary spending is the first to react when consumers hit their limits.
Foot traffic at chain restaurants in March dropped 3.4% from a year ago. Menu prices couldn’t be increased enough to make up for it, and same-store sales fell 1.1%.

The least bad region was the Western US, where sales inched up 1.2% year-over-year and traffic fell only 1.7%, according to TDn2K’s Restaurant Industry Snapshot. The worst was the NY-NJ Region, where sales plunged 4.6% and foot traffic 6.3%.


This comes after a dismal February, when foot traffic had dropped 5% year-over-year, and same-store sales 3.7%. The February debacle was blamed on $65 billion in delayed tax refunds from the IRS, as mandated by Congress, to allow the IRS to get its arms around a large-scale identity-theft problem. But by mid-February, the floodgates opened and record amounts of tax refunds started pouring out. By the end of February, the IRS was pretty much caught up. So March, with all this money sloshing around in bank accounts, was expected to be better. But no.


TDn2K’s Restaurant Industry Snapshot:
March’s results were disappointing for an industry desperately trying to reverse performance trends; sales have been negative in 11 out of the last 12 months.

This left first quarter foot traffic down 3.6% and same-store sales down 1.6% – with both food and alcohol sales down – the fifth quarter in a row of year-over-year sales declines. According to the report: “The last time the industry experienced a similar period was in 2009 and the first half of 2010.”
In Q4 2016 – which also should have been a stronger quarter, given the now dashed hopes of the economy picking up some steam – sales had already dropped 2.4%, “highlighting the difficult operating environment currently facing many operators.”

Average restaurant checks inched up in Q1 by 1.9%, down from the 2016 average increase of 2.3%. The report blames more promotions to bring in customers and “conservative menu price increases in response to continual declines in traffic.”

In the group, the best performers in the quarter where upscale casual, fine dining, and quick service. The weakest segments were family dining and fast casual. For them, it’s tough out there.






The data underlying TDn2K’s Restaurant Industry Snapshot is based on weekly sales from over 26,000 restaurant units and over 145 brands, with $66 billion in annual revenue. The crummy March performance was doubly disappointing:

1. The industry had hoped that the flood of IRS tax refunds would goose March sales, but that didn’t happen.
2. Easter holiday “represents a potential loss of sales” for the largest segments of the industry – quick service and casual dining. The holiday fell into March last year but into April this year. So this should have helped in March, but it didn’t.

It’s not totally surprising, given the decline in traffic and sales, that year-over-year job “growth” at chain restaurants was a negative -2.3%, with about 60% of the restaurants in the data reporting lower employee counts than a year ago. “This may not be good news for service scores and guest satisfaction,” the report observes dryly.

As always, there are winners and losers. According to Wallace Doolin, Chairman and founder of TDn2K:
“Our research does show there are real winners with impressive results. These ‘Top Box’ performers are across the segments, size and ownership of the brands.

Brands investing in the customer experience and the employee experience with technology and staff development are stealing share to grow their businesses.”
Everyone who goes to restaurants has figured this out. Lousy service, crummy food, a mediocre experience, and menu prices that are rising too fast are all excellent methods of driving customers away. But that would only shift traffic from losers to winners.


The persistent sales declines – despite price increases – in the overall chain restaurant industry over the past five quarters must have other causes. This could be in form of competition from other sectors not represented in these numbers, such as taco trucks and independent restaurants, cafés, and delis.

Or it could be a reluctance or inability to eat out when money is getting tighter due to cost-of-living increases in other areas, such as rent or healthcare, as wages for large parts of the population are stuck. But then why didn’t these folks splurge on a hamburger in March when the tax-refund money was beckoning? Or was that money used to catch up on past-due car payments and rents?


Restaurant spending is a thermometer for discretionary spending, which varies with how well consumers are doing, and it’s the first to react. When consumers hit their limits, the first things they cut are discretionary items, such as eating out. So this is another warning sign percolating up from beneath the surface.
And there may well be more beneath the surface. Read… Great Debt Unwind: Consumer Bankruptcies Jump, First since 2010. Commercial Bankruptcies Spike

http://kingworldnews.com/art-cashin-...rm-is-brewing/

 

1. We Are Seeing Historic Moves In The Gold Market
2. Dow Tumbles 139 As Legendary Short Seller Warns We Will See Crazy Action When Money Starts Pouring Into The Gold & Silver Complex
3. Fear & Greed Index And Some Other Major Highlights
4. Man Who Advises Top Sovereign Wealth Funds In The World Says All Hell Is Going To Break Loose In 2017
5. Art Cashin – A Great Storm Is Brewing
6. We Are Seeing Historic Moves In The Gold Market
7. Dow Tumbles 139 As Legendary Short Seller Warns We Will See Crazy Action When Money Starts Pouring Into The Gold & Silver Complex

Art Cashin – A Great Storm Is Brewing
April 12, 2017 GOLD, KWN, KWN II King World News
http://kingworldnews.com/wp-content/...-864x400_c.jpg
As tension heat up around the world, Art Cashin just warned that a great storm is brewing.


(King World News) – Legend Art Cashin: On this day in 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte stood in the hands of captors. Just three years earlier he had been the self-proclaimed Emperor of France, de Facto ruler of most of Europe and the proud father of a new-born son by his second wife. In addition, even his enemies had conceded him a unique sense of governance – his Napoleonic code stands to this day on two continents.


But he had an aggressive M & A department that told him to gamble all this for a hostile takeover of Russia. It wasn’t junk bonds that did him in. Instead it was junk weather. When his victorious army found itself forthright but freezing, he was forced to retreat. And even though he fought off old enemies in incredible ways – once they touched French soil he abdicated to save his people.


So, here he was, a short Corsican kid with a great mind and a lousy stomach who had come up just short of ruling the world in a way Alexander and Caesar never quite made.
Unable to accept this fall from grandeur, he secretly asked his private doctors for poison, that he might die rather than be humiliated. Once he had taken the potion, he decided to move for the melodramatic. Why die in your room alone when you could make a grand gesture.


He summoned his guards and demanded a meeting with his counterparts, the leaders of his captors. Once in audience, he would speak of the great work he had done and then die dramatically at the feet of these Lilliputians.


At the audience the medicine began to take its effect. But it was counterbalanced by the medication for his ulcer. Before his magnificent speech began, he developed — hiccups. So the nearly emperor of the world did not die defiantly at the feet of his captors. Instead he hiccupped and stammered until he had to be helped – incoherently and inaudibly back to his bed.


Doubly lost, he quietly went into exile at Elba, but a year later when the medication wore off, he escaped and within 100 days, he had nearly recouped all his former glory. But then came Waterloo – but that’s another story, for another day.

The market had plenty of hiccups yesterday and by the afternoon; they managed to struggle to a neutral close.

A Puzzle That Offered Its Own Solution – I had to leave for a doctor’s appointment right on the opening bell and returned late morning to a bit of a puzzle as the following email illustrates.

Spent much of the morning at the doctor’s (ravages of old age). Returned to floor to see Dow down 119.

Sherlock Holmes review favors geo-political trigger. Clear flight to safety: gold up $20; 10 year yield threatens to break 2.30 and VIX above 15.

Think its collective weight of geo-politics – two Trump tweets. Some congress comment on Syria; civil but very stern visit by Tillerson, etc. etc.

A few of the FoF wrote in to say that they too saw a strong geo-political thread in the action. Several noted that there was pronounced weakness in the multi-nationals with relative strength in the small cap, domestically oriented, stocks. That would be consistent with geo-political concerns.


While neither the FoF nor various floor types zeroed in on a single trigger, a few did cite a statement from North Korea, which was rather belligerent and, tantalizingly, used the word “nuclear”, but ironically in reference to visionary focus rather than weaponry.

Most felt the geo-political influence was a kind of “by weight and number” rather than a specific event.

The morning flurry of geo-political background buzz dried up as we went into early afternoon and some dip buying helped lift prices in clearly thin trading in thin liquidity, thanks to multiple holidays colliding.

The final three hours were a low volume zigzag right below the neutral zone. Ultimately, the Dow closed with single digit losses in volume under a billion shares yet again. Any thoughts on clean shirts and carfare?

A Founders Day Focus – April 15th is Founders Day in North Korea. That has been a time when North Korean leaders have tried to impress folks with rocket launches and bomb detonations.

This year the fifteenth falls right in Easter weekend. That usually brings a geo-political vacuum (unless you have an Irish heritage and a hundred year memory of grudges).
If Kim does try for some attention grabbing stunt, it will likely vault him well over the Syrian question.

It will also bring to the fore, what are the options for the U.S. and the West on North Korea. As I have noted in recent Comments, the options are neither numerous nor very good.

Recently, in his absolutely invaluable blog “Geostrat”, Bob Hardy outlined an NBC listing of a few of those options, which the network says were given to the President as a background for his one on one summit with President Xi.

Here is that rather limited list:

NBC News, citing multiple anonymous top-ranking U.S. military and intelligence officials, reported April 7, 7:23 p.m. EDT, the National Security Council had, before the Trump-Xi summit, presented President Trump with options to respond to North Korea’s nuclear program.

The top option number is to deploy nuclear weapons to South Korea for the first time in 25 years. Assassinating Kim Jong-un and top North Korean officials in charge of the North’s nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and decision-making is number 2. Infiltrating U.S. and South Korean Special forces to conduct sabotage on the North’s infrastructure ranked third. Accelerating cyber-attacks and staging airstrikes were at the bottom of the list.

“The White House hopes the Chinese will do more to influence Pyongyang through diplomacy and enhanced sanctions. But if that fails, and North Korea continues its development of nuclear weapons, there are other options on the table that would significantly alter U.S. policy,” NBC reported citing its sources.

Not exactly a Christmas list, to say the least.

Overnight And Overseas – The safe haven plays and geo-politics continue as backdrop to today’s a market. In Asia, Tokyo got dinged with Shanghai and India somewhat less so. Hong Kong was odd man out with a solid rally.

Things are a little cheerier with modest rallies in London and on the continent.

Gold is higher again but not with Tuesday’s conviction. Crude is up nicely, helped by last night’s surprise API drawdown. The dollar is a smidge higher as are bond yields.
Consensus – The geo-political cauldron simmers. Traders will look to see if Putin finally visits with Tillerson. Tension on several fronts likely to build as long weekend nears.

Good day

Hope everyone is doing well.

Here is your updated closed positions.

I think it is a great idea. I will keep US30 on 100 units short and change SPX500 to 50 units short.
wow, 49.1% in 50 days - Outstanding!

Well I would say that your comments below each post is very helpful to sum up the news article, it safes time for us who can not speed read yet. Then when you edit the one post with updates how you think, what is happening in the markets as the day progress and then the screenshot while you have open trades and after they are closed is a big help for me to learn.

In the past when my position would go into a -$ 300 or - $500 or even - $750, I had an tendency to want to close them or close them out of fear to not get into a bigger loss, I doubt myself/the trade plans. Or did I enter correctly and afterwards I would go back to see what would have happened if I kept my position open, then 99% of the time the price would have reversed at - $990 or - $1020 and go right back and end in profit for the day or the next day.

I was not patient enough to let the market do its thing. I wanted my position to have gone directly into profit and not into a minus and that means that I wanted to be exactly right to have entered when the price hit the high, the turning point . That belief I had to change, because you do not know exactly when the market will turn, so that is also the beauty of our trade plan, because you have 2 more opportunities besides from your fist entry to enter at a better price and as Benjamin mentioned in the past, your last positions is usually the biggest profit.

I have become more patient to wait for an hour or 3 or even a day for that position to get to my target or to become a profitable trade. I guest that is also where experiences comes in and that is why you should at least try something/new strategy for 3 - 6 months to see its value and profitability in action.

Here are the charts and we also have news in 23 minutes.

http://traderfeed.blogspot.ca/2017/0...ose-money.html

Saturday, April 08, 2017
The Real Reason Traders Lose Money
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JwOf5xRRL...ersonality.jpg
So I've figured out the real reason traders lose money. It's only taken me how many years as a psychologist to figure this out, but, hey, no one ever said psychologists have a monopoly on the insight market.

Before launching into the actual reason traders lose money, let's step back and review an important principle: Most accepted wisdom in the trading world consists of kernels of wisdom that have been blown up into Grand Ideas that are utterly invalid.

The poster child for this phenomenon is the idea of discipline. Successful trading requires having rules that guide decisions and actions. Success requires the consist following of those rules. Given a set of valid rules, the better performer will be the disciplined person who trades with fidelity to those rules. Makes sense.

But once we blow discipline into a Grand Idea and insist that Discipline is the source of all trading success, we then have mentors and coaches who harangue traders with journals and checklists to monitor every minute activity. This ultimately serves two purposes: it makes traders so self conscious that they are no longer attuned to market patterns, and it so routinizes trading that traders become unable to adapt to changing market conditions. As a general principle, discipline makes sense. As a supposed formula for trading success, Discipline ensures consistency in losing.

The same is true for ideas of emotional awareness and mindfulness in trading. Great ideas in context that, once blown into Great Principles, divert traders from the real work for identifying objective patterns playing out in the marketplace. If a trader trades randomness with self awareness, they will be a keen observer of their own demise.


Which brings us to the topic at hand: the real reason traders lose money.

One of those nuggets of wisdom that gets blown out of proportion is the idea that success comes from trading in a way that fits your personality. There is certainly truth to that. If you're an extroverted person, your idea generation is likely to benefit from talking with knowledgeable market participants. If you're introverted, you are more likely to benefit from reflection and analysis. Taken to the level of Grand Principle, however, the idea that success will follow from expressing your personality in markets becomes a kind of anything goes, do whatever you feel like justification for poor decision making.

Because *that* is the real reason traders lose money: They ARE trading their personalities. Show me a losing trader and I'll show you someone acting out their personality in risk-taking. Consider examples drawn from the "big five" personality traits:

* The trader who lacks conscientiousness in his/her personal life fails to achieve consistency in trading. The trader who is overly conscientious fails to innovate when market conditions change.

* The trader who lacks emotional stability in his/her life trades impulsively and emotionally. The trader who is highly emotionally stable has difficulty taking proper risk out of fear of upsetting the emotional apple cart.

* The trader who is highly introverted or extroverted allows internal or external stimuli to interfere with decision making.

* The trader who is highly open to experience becomes so enamored of new ideas that his/her trading becomes skewed by the latest shiny toy. The trader lacking openness to experience finds one way to make money and can't do anything else even after that one way loses its edge.

* The trader who is very likeable has difficulty tuning out people and becomes easily distracted by noise. The trader who lacks likeability alienates the very colleagues that could help inform his or her trading.

In other words, traders lose money BECAUSE they are trading their personalities. Every personality trait brings potential assets and liabilities to trading. Sometimes, our personalities pose severe challenges to trading success. Every personality asset, when overutilized, brings its own set of problems.

There is only one source of making money in markets, and that is identifying recurring patterns in market behavior and exploiting those in a manner that provides solid reward relative to risk. We marshal and attenuate various personality traits to identify and exploit those patterns. Success comes, not from indulging our personalities, but from knowing which traits to draw upon and which to work around. That is called wisdom.

Benjaminis Holy Grail - an object or goal that is sought after for its great significance.

Good Friday Ladies and Gentleman

When I started my Forex Career during 2003, I opened a demo account with Saxo Bank and the account had $100,000 US Dollars to trade with. When I was finally ready to trade real funds during January 2006, I met up with a businessman friend of mine and I incorporated a company , issued shares for working capital of $10,000 Canadian Dollars and then found 5 clients who deposited $10,000 US Dollars each at Trade Freedom in Montreal and these funds were in place during February 2006.

I was using the Saxo platform that I learned my trade on because Trade Freedom worked with Saxo in Denmark. I wanted everything to be perfect before my first Forex trade ever with real funds. So, I waited until March 9, 2006 before I starting my Forex business. I only stayed with Trade Freedom until early June 2006 because I found out that Man Financial was better suited for my needs and with my trading style using the FXCM Forex platform was more suited for me.

All the while I was trading at Trade Freedom my results were beyond even my expectations. One of my clients who I traded for under Limited Power of Attorney which only allows you to trade the funds of the client of Trade Freedom. I am the trading agent approved by the compliance department of Trade Freedom.

My client decided to deposit another $15,000 US Dollars during early May 2006 and by the time he closed his account at Trade Freedom and moved his account over to Man Financial in Montreal, I had doubled his account to $50,000 US Dollars.

We could say that my EGO was pretty HIGH at that point in my Forex Career. Well it was especially since with all of my clients that I had at Trade Freedom during those three months of Forex trading, I NEVER had ONE Losing Forex Trade.

The reason that I am sharing my Forex trading background because it is on topic with the fascinating article we have just read here on my post.

One of my friends that I traded for and still have a friendship with witnessed by FIRST LOSS in Forex. The loss was for $100 US Dollars. I intentionally took the LOSS and that is when I officially became a True Forex Trader.

My Common Sense defeated my EGO.


The loss felt so good for two reasons. The first was of course I did not have the pressure of trying to never ever lose a Forex trade which eventually would have guaranteed me a substantial loss or margin call. The second reason is that you are always a winner when you take a loss to protect your Forex trading capital.

I also learned a great lesson when I was trading for my FIRST $50,000 US Funds client at Trade Freedom. Once I build up the account to the $50,000 US Dollars balance by generating locked in profits of $25,000 US Dollars, during early May 2006 , I went LONG $1,000,000 US Dollars of EUR/USD all with one Forex Trade.


Alan Greenspan the FED Chairman at that time spoke publically around Noon and his remarks caused EUR/USD to go down about 100 PIPS which caused a DRAW DOWN of $25,000 US Dollars.

One of the reasons that make it easier for everyone to understand why I had NEVER lost any Forex Trades at Trade Freedom was that I was only trading EUR/USD LONG and I was only trading the TREND. You start to see my psychology and my Forex trading style that I have continued to develop right up to today, Easter Friday.

I held my one position and finally after around 30 days, EUR/USD returned to a level that allowed me to close my position with a small profit. Shortly thereafter, moved over to Man Financial with some of my clients. They all closed their Forex accounts at Trade Freedom in Montreal with a substantial profit. My profits came from charging them a 20% performance fee.

That is when I decided that from there on, that I would SCALE in my Forex positions which is how I trade today and teach. You now understand the Trade Plan and Risk Management.

I will now tie together my thoughts here and what must be clear to the reader of this post that by using a $50,000 US Funds Demo Account most of the main psychological issues can be dealt with while you learn how to improve your trading results.

You trade without FEAR , GREED or EGO as KeepCalmfx had explained to us in the post done the other day.

I would really appreciate it for everyone to leave a comment for me here once they read my post here that I wanted to share with everyone on this holiday of Peace and Harmony.

To be a successful and profitable Forex trader then you MUST try to be at peace and harmony with yourself and that is the whole point of the brilliant article by Brent that I have shared here today.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.co...ds-on-day-100/

Here Comes MOAD: Why The Trump Reflation Fantasy Ends On Day 100


By David Stockman. Posted On Friday, April 14th, 2017


Even as the stock averages were taking a spill Thursday afternoon, the CNBC talking heads were busy talking up still another "upturn" in the US economy and corporate profits. According to them, yesterday's last minute jitters in the casino was just a MOAB scare before the long holiday weekend.


Soon, however, the market will reestablish its footing around the recently breached 50-day moving averages. Then, it will be back to buying the dips as the never ending bull takes still another leg higher.

We will get to why the "stimulus" junkies on Wall Street are under the delusion that they have been self-cured in a moment. But in honor of the Donald's GBU-43 attack on the Hindu Kush mountains yesterday, let us first introduce MOAD.


We are referring to the "mother of all debt" crises, of course. The opening round is coming when Washington goes into shutdown mode on April 28, which happens to be Day 100 of the Donald's reign.


In theory, this should be just a routine extension of the FY 2017 continuing resolution (CR) by which Congress is funding the $1.1 trillion compartment of government which is appropriated annually. The remaining $3 trillion per year of entitlements and debt service is on automatic pilot, but the truth is Washington can't agree on what to do about either component---except to keeping on borrowing to pay the bills.


There is a problem with this long-running game of fiscal kick-the-can, however. Namely, a 100 year-old statute requires Congress to raise the ceiling for treasury borrowing periodically, but the Imperial City has now reached the point in which there is absolutely no way forward to accomplish this.



Moreover, that cardinal fact is ill-understood by Wall Street because it does not remotely recognize that all the debt ceiling increases since the public debt exploded after the 2008-09 crisis were an accident of the Obama presidency.


That is, surrounded by Keynesian economic advisers and big spending Democratic politicians, he had no fear of the national debt at all and obviously even believed the more debt the better. Pursuant to that wrong-headed presumption, Obama was also able to bamboozle the establishment GOP leadership led by former Speaker Boehner into supplying a quota of GOP votes to the "responsible" course of action.


Needless to say, Obama is gone, Boehner is gone and the 17-month debt ceiling "holiday" that they confected in October 2015 to tide Washington through the election is gone, too. What's arrived is vicious partisan warfare, a new President who is clueless about the urgency of the debt crisis and a bloc of 50 or so Freedom Caucus republicans who now rule Washington.


And good for them! They genuinely fear and loathe the banana republic financial profligacy that prevails in the Imperial City, and would rip the flesh from Speaker Ryan's face were he to go the Boehner route and try to assemble a "bipartisan" consensus for a condition-free increase in the debt ceiling.

What that means is a completely new ball game in the Imperial City that will absolutely dominate the agenda as far as the eye can see. That's because the Freedom Caucus will insist that sweeping entitlement reforms and spending cuts accompany any debt ceiling increase. Indeed, even "moderate" Senator Rob Portman (Ohio) has legislation requiring that dollar for dollar deficit cuts accompany any increase in the debt ceiling.


Yet, if you think the GOP fractures and fissures generated by Obamacare replace and repeal were difficult, you haven't seen nothin' yet. There is absolutely no basis for GOP consensus on meaningful deficit cuts, meaning that MOAD will bring endless starts, stops, showdowns and shutdowns, as the US Treasury recurringly exhausts its cash and short-term extensions of its borrowing authority.


In the meanwhile, everything else---health care reform, tax cuts, infrastructure----will become backed-up in an endless queue of legislative impossibilities.

Accordingly, there will be no big tax cut in 2017 or even next year. For all practical purposes Uncle Sam is broke and his elected managers are paralyzed.

As a empirical matter, the Treasury will be out of cash and up against a hard stop debt limit of $19.8 trillion in a matter of months. But long before that there will be a taste of the Shutdown Syndrome on April 28 owing to the accumulating number of "poison pill" "riders" to the CR.


These include the virtual certainty of riders to "defund" planned parenthood and sanctuary cities in the House bill, and possible funds demanded by the White House to start the Mexican Wall, enhance Homeland's deportation force and fund some of Trump's $54 billion defense increase.


By contrast, the Senate Democrats will move heaven and earth to attach mandatory funding for upwards of $7 billion to fund the Obamacare cost sharing program, declaiming noisily that without these funds massive new premium increases will be needed and/or more insurance companies will withdraw from the Obamacare exchanges next fall. Unfortunately, such rank demagoguery will almost surely gather not inconsiderable support from squishy middle-of-the-road Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.


To be sure, none of these riders have much to do with the mutli-trillion deficit and debt ceiling crises ahead, but they are just as toxic politically.

So when they close for several days the Washington monument owing to an inability to reach agreement on a trivial $70 million annual funding item for family planning services-----the equivalent of nine minutes of annual Federal spending or something that Bill Gates could fund out of his cash drawer----it will not only come as a shock to Wall Street; it will also embody a warning that there is no consensus or functioning government in Washington, and that as these battles accumulate the degree of dysfunction will only intensify.


Meanwhile, there is another shock heading toward the canyons of Wall Street. Namely, that this so-called recovery is finally running out of gas. As we have often stated, we have no use for the seasonably maladjusted and endlessly manipulated, massaged and revised data that come out of the Washington statistical mills.


By contrast, the data that comes out of Uncle Sam's revenue farebox is an altogether different kettle of fish. That is, not employer in America is paying withholding taxes on payroll slots that do not exist or sending in estimated taxes on profits that are not happening.

Yet after six months of the FY 2017 has elapsed, two things are quite evident. First, Federal receipts in March were down on a year over year basis (12 month moving average) for the fourth month running. As the chart suggest, the so-called recovery has deflated completely and receipts are now heading below the flat line in the manner that has accompanied prior recessions.
https://mises.org/sites/default/file...?itok=P9-pnD-f
Secondly, the deficit is once again rising rapidly. During the first 6 months of this fiscal year it totaled $527 billion compared to $459 billion last year, thereby representing a 15% year-over-year gain. And that is something new on the scene, as well.

To wit, the kick-the-can fiscal game of the last eight years was enabled originally by the false fears in Washington generated during and after the financial crisis by Bernanke and Paulson; and after the crisis passed, by the glib belief that the Federal deficit was steadily falling and would cure itself with the passage of enough time.

That delusion is now off the table----at least among the Freedom Caucus republicans who rule the roost. So again, the consequence will be a hardening of the lines of battle around MOAD in a manner that has never before been seen in the Imperial City.

And that brings us back to the talking heads and the purported upturn in the economic outlook and profits. The Treasury's farebox indicator says absolutely no dice to the former, and a decent regard for context and history exposes the sheer sophistry of the latter.


As it happened, the reported net income of the S&P 500 companies came in at $94.55 per share for the LTM period ending in Q4 2016. That's still down 11% from the September 2014 peak of $106 per share, and barely matches the $94.37 posted way back in September 2013.


Moreover, based on the rate that Wall Street estimates for Q1 2017 have descended into their usual shrinking pattern before earnings announcement season commences, we are quite confident that the LTM figure for Q1 will be hard pressed to exceed $97 per share.


Stated differently, we doubt the current quarter earnings trend will represent even a 3% increase from where profits were more than four years ago!
And even that sliver of gain is due to the massive stock buyback programs which have put corporate American deeper into hock than ever before; and which have stripped-mined their balance sheets and future growth capacities in order to pleasure Wall Street in the short run.

Self-evidently, none of that sounds like a signal to "buy the dip". Instead, as we told Fox Business this morning, it is stark warning to get out of the casino before it is too late.


Indeed, even if you are not troubled by the outbreak of hostilities at hotspots all around the planet or not inclined to fret about the shocking fact that the Fed is actually contemplating balance sheet shrinkage for the first time in essentially three decades, there is still this: The US economy is sliding toward recession and the chances that the "stimulus" baton will be handed off to ballyhooed Trump Reflation are lower than those of the proverbial snowball in the hot place.
So what the Wall Street stimulus junkies are really saying is that they have self-cured. As they would have the retail sheep believe, the US and global economies are "accelerating" all on their own and we are heading for double digits gains in corporate profits, representing one of the best quarters in years.
Then again, they have been saying that since 2013. The Trump Stimulus fantasy is perhaps the last call to the sheep. On April 28, reality is likely to come breaking in and finally shatter the delusion.


Source: David Stockman on health reform: There will be zero savings

Good Happy Easter Friday Everyone and Shabbat Shalom to anyone of the Jewish Faith. Did I leave anyone out ? OK .... For everyone else PEACE AND HARMONY.

I have been comparing Forex trading courses being offered by accredited professionals and I am going to paste here what is being taught from this Professional Forex trader and teacher.

I am doing it for two reasons. The first is to see what is offered and the second is to compare the method of teaching.

Here it is ...

Trade with an edge, manage risk, be consistent and keep it simple.

Curtis M. Faith who made more than $30 million dollars trading for Richard Dennis

What You Will Receive

4 weeks with 2 hour training sessions twice a week with me live.

4 weeks with 1 hour trading followup review sessions, once a week to ensure that your trading is on track.

20 hours of personal live coaching over 8 weeks.

Private one-on-one interactive coaching live via internet web conferencing. All you need is a computer and a fast internet connection. We will be able to talk while you see my trading screen, as I demonstrate each technique.

I will walk you through, step by step what you need to know and recognize to be successful in forex trading. Simple techniques are much more effective with trading than complicated ones. You will learn how to spot when the massive traders, The Whales have stepped in and are going to trend the market, the direction, and how to trade along with them. By placing your trades and setting your profit targets similar to theirs, your trading success increases exponentially.

Over the course of 8 weeks, you will learn, identify and practice the techniques every day, as they become ingrained as a habit. It will change completely the way you look at charts and take trades. It will build your confidence, enabling you to be focused and ready for each trade to set up.

My course is evenly spaced in two hour sessions, twice a week over a four week period. By spacing the instruction over 4 weeks, you will be able to learn without being overwhelmed and it gives you the opportunity to practice the techniques daily. You are encouraged to send me screenshots daily with your comments, identifying what we covered, so I can help you with any questions, avoid miscommunication and prevent any bad habits from forming.

It gives you a chance to look for and test daily in a live market, what you have learned, but not with real money. I want you to have at least a 65+ percent winning consistency over two or three months, and thoroughly understand how to identify when to enter a trade, reward to risk ratio, dynamic stop-loss placement, institutional profit targets for the session, weekly goals and money management, before considering using real money.


Its important to realize the market does not behave the same way each day and some weeks it offers us more opportunities to take trades than other weeks.

Over 8 weeks, I will gradually introduce you to several techniques/strategies that will allow you to find at least one trade most days and some days more. If the market does not produce one of our high probability setups, we dont trade!

How to simplify trading by learning how to read price action and identify the turning points when the Huge Institutional Money The Whales are entering and exiting the market. Too many retail traders focus on indicators never used by institutional traders.

They enter a trade but lack winning consistency and cant figure out why they encounter frequent losses. This inconsistency happens because the indicators lag price action and the trader has put too much time concentrating on indicators and not enough time concentrating on what price is revealing. (I learned this from a man who places trades in the billions of dollars. He uses only one indicator and he has mastered it. It has been proven to be 80+% accurate in numerous university studies at M.I.T., Stanford and University of Chicago to name a few.

This indicator is readily available in any MT4 platform for free. I have spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours learning how to use this one indicator. I will teach you how and when I use this powerful indicator as one of the techniques/strategies.

How to trade the UK and the first half of the US Session. This is the most profitable time to trade. Once you know how to identify where and when the Huge Institutional Money The Whales are entering the market, creating the session trend, you will be able to enter your trade and follow along.

How to know when a session trend is most likely to end so you can protect your profits and get out safely. This is an amazing technique that has such incredible accuracy that I would never look at a chart or consider a profit target without taking this into account first.

How to trade the New York Session open until the London close. Have you ever noticed that a currency pair may trend strongly during the first half of the UK session then abruptly retraces as the US session gets underway? This is very common and presents regular trading opportunities.

Money Management and Reward to Risk ratio evaluation before taking a trade (This can make or break your account.)

Entering and exiting trades.
1. How to use only small stop losses and get the risk out of your trades quickly, so you are not a stressed-out trader
2. How to protect profits while in a trade so you dont give back a large portion of your gains
3. The most productive times to trade, when not to trade, and avoiding over-trading.
4. How to set high probability profit targets to achieve your daily and weekly trading goals.
5. How to stay in the trade without fear so you can enjoy trading more.

Increasing your accounts size by protecting your profits, adjusting your profit targets with what the market is offering each session and not being greedy.

Greed can be a traders worst enemy!

How to Keep It Simple to be Successful. I avoid complicated charts, complicated indicators, complicated patterns and the nonsense most books would have you believe is the key to your trading success. I will share with you institutional tips and tricks used by Hedge Funds, Banks and some of the largest traders in the market.

Ongoing support I want you to be successful! I will make additional time for you to answer questions and review your trades with you from time to time.

Remember, the key to your ongoing success will be consistency, focus, discipline and keeping it simple.

My students are very supportive and enjoy sharing information with other students. Some graduate students even trade together.


What I Dont Offer
1. A bulletproof trading system all trading techniques/strategies experience losses. Professional traders mitigate their losses through Money Management appropriate position size and stop loss placement then move on to the next trade setup.

2. A complicated system with fancy indicators. The more complicated your system, the less chance it will work or that you will follow it! Dont get distracted by indicators, gadgets or information overload. The majority of technical trading indicators are a total waste of time with currencies and not used by institutional traders. The most important indicator is price learn the patterns and how to interpret what price is telling you.

3. An effortless system to make hundreds of pips every day or while you sleep it doesnt exist, despite what many internet trading marketers would like you to believe.

4. A video system that you can master over a weekend or a couple of weeks. To be a successful trader requires dedication, time and practicelike anything else!

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that made all the difference.
Robert Frost

Comments from Benjaminis...

I just read every word of this promotional article and now using his format I will state what I teach successfully and this is clear by my results and the results of KeepCalmfx.

(1) I first determine if you have the tools to be a Forex Currency Trader. If you do not after 90 days I will tell you and bottom line your results on your $50,000 US Funds Demo Account will tell you also.

(2) Then I give you an EDGE. The EDGE is our Money Flow Trading Method. I only need to see if on Monday we have RISK ON or RISK OFF. I do not need to look at any charts or patterns or indicators or Pivot Points or Supply and Demand or Support and Resistance. You saw what KeepCalmfx and myself have done over the last week of Forex Trading.

(3) I will show you how to use Risk Management (NOT MONEY MANAGEMENT) to protect your capital and make decent returns on each trade not make profits of 10 or 15 PIPS and wonder at all times where you are going to make your next Forex trade.

(4) I will help you work with the technical indicators whether Pivot Points or Supply and Demand or Support and Resistance. You see the charts that KeepCalmfx posts here every day. I also post charts from WWW.FINVIZ.COM that are great because they are all LIVE CHARTS available over different time frames.

(5) As a fundamental Forex trader as events take place all over the world I keep you informed almost 18 hours a day what is happening and what you need to be aware of in the coming days.

I have no idea what this gentleman is charging for all the hours that he is spending for the course however I know that it will be more than $50 US Dollars a month which is what my corporation will be charging for a method that works with all of it's benefits. Of course as I have offered many times here anyone that is subscribed to my thread here will have a LIFETIME FREE PASS to all sections of our company website.

The most fascinating part of this post for me is to yet find and of course I am sure there are many that trade using the Money Flow Method and earn over 10% a month Return on Investment.

As always please subscribe and please give me feedback and ask me questions that you have. The results that I have demonstrated here of 49.1 % in 50 days is what I teach. Common Sense shows it works and why.

Now I will take a break for the rest of the day and smell the roses and continue to enjoy my day and live my life in mostly peace and harmony.


Benjamin

On Edit at 4:00 PM

I Love Life and I Love Full Disclosure. I decided to find out more about the gentleman whose information I posted here.

Here is his background as it is on his information page. The read is very interesting and on my topic so I share it here now.

I will contact him next week to ask the cost of his 20 hours over two weeks and ask him if he also trades Forex and if he does what his average Return on Investment monthly is and if it is lower than 5% a month I may offer to teach him my method. I said that tongue in my cheek.


About Michael Bridgman
http://www.privateforexcoaching.com/...ridgman-01.png
During my 15 year career as an investment advisor I worked at one of the largest banks in Canada and also at one of the country’s largest independent firms. Early on, I developed a passion for technical analysis. I charted stocks, indices and derivatives each and every day. I left all that in 2004, because I wanted to start trading Forex full-time.

At first, I wasn’t consistently successful, so I did what many of us do in those situations: I dug in, buying lots of books on Forex trading, paying handsomely for fancy software packages and so-called Forex trading secrets. I was voracious, experimenting with various indicators, joining a number of Forex trading groups and attending one conference after another. It was on this journey that I met a number of wonderful, talented and gifted people who were also trying to increase their consistency by experimenting with new methods. We were all searching for the “holy grail” of trading. (There isn’t one, but you can make a very nice living and/or supplement your income with Forex trading.)

Fast forward a few years, thousands of hours of screen time later, and a very unique opportunity was brought to my attention by one of my trading friends. He called to tell me about a Forex training course led by a Chicago trader with over 35 years of experience. He’s one of the largest currency and commodity traders in the world – placing trades in the billions of dollars. He was teaching this course in person only once and I was very fortunate to have attended. We received intensive training over four or five days – there were only about 50 of us – and we had personal access to him throughout the day and evening, along with two of his top traders.
I flew home afterward and continued investing more time and money into a mentoring relationship with this master of Forex Trading. I began putting his techniques into practice and my trading consistency improved. This early experience was invaluable and became pivotal to my trading success.

A couple of years later, I was invited to a trading webinar hosted by the chief currency analyst and senior partner of a major New York trading firm. He had over 30 years of trading experience in both London and New York and was there to demonstrate his streamlined trading method. I loved the simplicity of it and contacted him afterwards to learn more. I then began incorporating some of his techniques into my own Forex trading system to get even better results.

Which brings me to how I can help you.

Forex trading is much easier once we have a real, quantifiable edge so we can recognize what the large institutional traders are focused on. They are not in the business of revealing this! They’re in business to make profits, and will often gyrate the market against retail traders and other institutional traders, taking their money. But once I teach you how to read and interpret their trading strategies – identifying the patterns each and every week – you will be able to enter higher probability trades with better consistency and results.


I’ll walk you through what you need to know over an intensive 4 week initial training period in two-hour sessions, twice a week. Then I’ll continue to work with you over an additional 4 weeks in one-hour weekly sessions, reviewing your trading to make sure that you remain on track. This is the most comprehensive one-on-one forex training that I’m aware of anywhere.


Let me help you experience the thrill of successful Forex trading with my intensive, one-on-one mentorship.

Sincerely,
Michael Bridgman

Here is the link that I found this morning on LinkedIn with one of his calls on USD/JPY.

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shri...77/0505320.jpg
Michael Bridgman
Currency Trader and Forex Trading Coach at PrivateForexCoaching.com

A countertrend long on the USDJPY
http://www.privateforexcoaching.com/2017/04/a-countertrend-trade-long-on-the-usdjpy-to-end-the-trading-week/
https://image-store.slidesharecdn.co...f11-medium.png

On Edit at 4:25 PM Eastern Standard Time.

I have sent a PM to Michael on Linkedin which is where I met him and I have asked him for the cost of his course. He seems to be a Class Act and I found a testimonial from a Bank Trader that I will share now.


I have been trading Forex for six years as a professional institutional (bank prop) trader and as a trader for a central bank before that. I became very interested in taking Michael’s course to learn how to successfully trade on a 15 minute chart – which is not something I have done before as an institutional position trader. His course became a journey that opened my eyes to intraday trading and the use of very tight stop losses!

His 15 minute chart methodology is very intelligent, and his no-BS minimize risk approach can save your fiscal health whenever the market decides to roller coaster and move 150 pips in the other direction. This is not a “plug and play indicator system” that doesn’t require thinking and evaluation.. It is a methodical trading method which promotes taking minimal risk to capture consistent profits with strict money management. Also, Michael’s teaching style is personal and very informative. As others have said, he really cares that you succeed. As an institutional trader, I have found his strategy for trading on the 15 minute chart gives me a real edge. I highly recommend taking his course to anyone serious about forex trading!

Michael T – European Bank Trader

Comments from Benjaminis for KeepCalmfx ... I am so tempted to drop everything that I have learned and teach and try his methods. Then I should be able to do 50% a Month (ROI) SMILE !!!

On Edit at 8:45 PM Eastern Standard Time...and finished at 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Sometimes I wish I could stop thinking and think of nothing except the Sun and the Moon and the Stars. However since that is not possible at this moment, I came back to add these comments. What starting me thinking is the comments of Mr Bridgman where he said that because the US Dollar Index went up the USD/JPY went down. Now we know that as the US 30 goes down so does USD/JPY. I do not factor the strength or weakness of the US Dollar Index in my CORRELATION.

So... what I just did is looked at an hourly chart from Finviz on USD/JPY from April 6, 2017 until today April 14, 2017.

Have a look at it and you will see USD/JPY went from 111.000 to 108.57... (A difference of 243 PIPS !!!)

http://finviz.com/forex_charts.ashx?t=USDJPY&tf=h1

Now here is the hourly chart of US 30.

http://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?t=YM&p=h1

You can see it went from 20,800 on April 6, 2017 to 20,400 on April 14, 2017...

Now I will produce the hourly chart of US Dollar Index from April 6, 2017 to April 14, 2017...

You can clearly SEE that it started at 100.50 and finished at 100.50 So... IT HAD NO EFFECT ON THE MOVEMENT of the 243 PIPS towards 108.000 on USD/JPY.

Here is what Michael Bridgman said...

April 13, 2017 by Michael Bridgman
After a third higher low for the day and a stronger USD, a long trade is taken risking 10 pips. Price completed a reversal formation and closed above yesterday’s low. When price bounced off its low today in the Asian session, buyers were entering at a very important level on the Daily chart. The USDJPY has been coming down all week and it was not surprising to see it move up today with a stronger USD. If today’s low is retested and gives way, it will be very telling. If it price continues higher… a break and daily close above 110.00 will be telling.
http://www.privateforexcoaching.com/...Y-1024x478.png
When taking countertrend trades, it is prudent to use tight stops and not to expect as many pips. Lock in profits along the way and get the risk out of the trade as soon as possible by moving your stop loss to a positive net position. Also it’s a good idea to take smaller size positions. As always read price which is the best indicator of all and protect your profits.

Enjoy the long weekend and good luck with your trading!

Comments from Benjaminis: Here is the part of the above that I am talking about. "it was not surprising to see it move up today with a (stronger USD). If today’s low is retested and gives way, it will be very telling. If it price continues higher… a break and daily close above 110.00 will be telling."

The STRONGER OR WEAKER US DOLLAR INDEX HAD NO EFFECT AND THE CORRELATION BETWEEN US DOLLAR INDEX and USD/JPY is clearly ZERO.

I would appreciate feedback on my observations. Thank You...

P.S. On Edit Again at 9:05 PM Eastern Standard Time...

I went back to his blog to look at this analysis of his on March 21, 2017. Here is what it says.

Riding the USDJPY down with the current USD weakness

March 21, 2017 by Michael Bridgman
Optimistic or not about President Trump’s future policies, the USD is weak and being sold off. In particular, the USDJPY is vulnerable and it set up nicely today. After testing its Asian high and rolling over, a short is taken with a 15 pip stop loss. Price moved down then slowed down and took us out of our trade just before the U.S. Open. It then dropped for the first candle of the U.S. Open before reversing upward. At the first sign of selling another entry short was taken with a 13 pip stop loss for a potential 58 pips to our Daily Target.

Comments from Benjaminis: In my view and based on CORRELATION the STRENGTH or WEAKNESS of the US Dollar Index CANNOT and WILL NOT move USD/JPY down 243 PIPS. At least now I will not bother using it as a direct factor. What say you ?

https://mises.org/blog/danger-federa...s-80-month-low

Danger: Federal Tax Revenue Growth Falls to 80-Month Low

1. https://mises.org/sites/default/file...?itok=6zTBDwMM

Taxes and SpendingPolitical Theory

04/13/2017Ryan McMaken

A new report from the US Treasury Department shows that growth in federal receipts has fallen to the lowest level seen in 80 months, with the 12-month average falling 1.3 percent from March 2016 to March 2017.


The last time federal receipts fell as far was during July of 2010 when they dropped 2.4 percent from July of the previous year. More importantly, the last time receipts fell this much, while in a downward trend, was in July 2008 shortly before the financial crisis.


March 2017 was the fourth month in a row during which federal receipts were down year over year, while growth rates overall have been falling quickly since mid-2015.
https://mises.org/sites/default/file...?itok=P9-pnD-f

If we remove the rolling averages and simply look at straight year-over-year growth, we find that growth rates have been bumping along near zero percent for the past year. By this measure, the overall trend has been downward since mid-2013.
https://mises.org/sites/default/file...?itok=Fnkrsi3q

This isn't to say that the federal government is hurting for revenues, of course. Through mid-2015, the feds were pulling in record receipts, and only over the past year have receipts begun to flatten out. Nevertheless, they remain above pre-recession levels.
https://mises.org/sites/default/file...?itok=Tl57saRe

So why is this trend important? Going back decades, we find when receipts turn from positive to negative, the US is either about to slip into recession or is already in recession.


Declining federal revenues should be a warning sign that all is not well in the economy. The habit of measuring economic well-being in terms of the Dow Jones or home prices as the Trump administration likes to do tells us little since rising home prices and stock prices are more indicators of price inflation in the current economy. And, of course, rising home prices largely just indicate that the cost of living is going up.


It's more likely that the lackluster tax data lackluster from the government's perspective illustrates that households and workers aren't doing nearly as well as we're being told they are.


Janet Yellen, after all, tells us that the economy is doing just swell, and this will allow for increases in the Fed's target rate.
But don't worry too much about the feds. Even if revenues fall, they'll be fine because they'll be able to make up for it by inflating the money supply and through deficit spending. Your household revenues and thus the tax receipts you produce may be going down, but the feds will simply go deeper into debt and ignore the problem.


Moreover, if we dig deeper into recent receipt data, we find that through the end of 2016, corporate tax revenues fell a whopping 11 percent, which was the largest drop since 2009 in the midst of recession. Indeed, it appears that much of the recent decline in receipts is due to falling corporate revenue.

Looking at personal income taxes through 2016, we find that growth in receipts is at the lowest level seen since 2003, in the wake of recession. The quarterly data doesn't look any better.
https://mises.org/sites/default/file...?itok=YPpBuOM1

While we have plenty of measures of how people "feel" about the economy, tax receipts remain one of the more objective measures of earnings. After all, in spite of what some cranks may say, paying federal taxes is mandatory under pain of legal sanctions, and thus provides us with a reliable glimpse into how much revenue people are earning. For most people, when they earn more, they pay more in taxes.


Last year, a look at total tax returns and personal income taxes paid revealed that wages and salaries went nowhere between 2007 and 2014 (the most recent year available).


On the other hand, those who already own lots of inflationary assets such as stocks, real estate, and fine art are doing fine. Many others many who pay the taxes appear to be doing less well.

COMMENTS FROM BENJAMINIS: So.... Ladies and Gentleman

We see now how I verify my facts. That is by constant RESEARCH to find out with 90% certainty where the USA is at financially. We of course know that things are GREAT !!! Why would Janet Yellen Lie ? Furthermore President Trump now likes her. April 28, 2017 is in 14 days and the House and Senate return on April 21, 2017 So... as my good friend from MAD always says... Alfred E. Neuman (GOOGLE IT) SMILE "What Me Worry ? "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Neuman

There I did it for you... Now for sure my last post for today so please subscribe if you care to and post any comments or questions on the tread and I will reply sometime tomorrow.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.co...stock-markets/

MOAB Coming to US Bond and Stock Markets


By Lee Adler. Posted On Friday, April 14th, 2017


The coming turmoil in the US Treasury’s bank account at the Fed will have a huge impact on bond prices in particular, and thus yields. It will also have an impact on stock prices that won’t be pretty. The good news is that we already know exactly how the turmoil will play out. We just don’t know the timing yet. But it will become apparent in time to act.


Meanwhile, growth rates of key banking indicators are collapsing and one critical indicator is in the middle of an outright crash. These measures suggest big trouble ahead for the markets.


Fed Liabilities
As of April 12, 2017, the US Treasury’s deposits at the Fed totaled $119.2 billion. This was an increase of $96 billion from 4 weeks before. That followed a drop of $222 billion from the February 8 Fed H41. In February and March, Trump couldn’t spend the money fast enough. This month the Treasury has been piling up cash.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.co...Capture-31.png
Source: FRB H.4.1

Corporate year end taxes were due on March 15. The Treasury processed and deposited them over the following week. Then in April, individual income taxes start to come in. The bulk of that will come after April 17 when taxes are due this year. The Treasury will gain some breathing room from these receipts, after running its cash down to a dangerously low level in early March.


The problem now is that the debt ceiling means that new borrowing will need to stop. The Treasury will need to spend all the cash in its account at the Fed without being able to borrow to supplement that cash. At some point in May the Treasury will have no more cash and no ability to borrow from the market. I don’t know how long it will take before the internal accounts that the Treasury is raiding to pay bills, like government employee pensions, are gone. I have seen estimates ranging from June to September. I suspect it will be earlier rather than later.


Here’s why that’s critical to the market outlook. For now, the Treasury can’t add new supply to the market as it normally would every month. That means that the cash coming into the US from the money being printed in Europe and Japan for their QE programs will not have the usual supply of bonds to purchase. At the same time, the Treasury may even pay down debt for a couple of weeks, using the tax windfall.


Even if the Treasury elects to hold on to the cash and simply use it to pay bills rather than pay off debt, it’s bullish for securities, which for now means bonds.

Stocks have suddenly become the whipping boy, so bonds are getting all the benefit of the drop in bond supply.

But then everything reverses when the Treasury finally runs out of cash. That will be a political flashpoint.

After some strutting and posturing by President and members of Congress, a deal will get done.


The Treasury will then start borrowing hand over fist to repay the accounts it raided and to replenish its cash. The bond market rally now under way will abruptly reverse, and all the recent gains are likely to disappear in an instant.

Stocks will also probably come under pressure given the onslaught of new Treasury supply that will follow a deal to raise the debt limit. There simply will not be enough cash around to support stock prices. As the debt ceiling impasse builds to a crescendo and the news of negotiations toward a deal builds, it will be time to sell your bonds.


Bank Loans Outstanding
Bank loans fell in March for the third straight month. The 3-month decline has ended a nearly 4-year string of all time records each month. The annual growth rate fell to 3.6% as of March 29. That’s down from 6% in December. It continues slowing growth that has steadily come down from 7.4% in September of last year. The growth rate had been between 7% and 8.5% from December 2014 until last September.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.co...Capture-32.png
This is starting to look like a trend change. Some of the speculation that had driven the economy and the markets has bled off and seems likely to continue to bleed off. This is a bearish sign for the stock market. The bull market has been driven by free and easy credit. The free part is going away. With the Fed beginning to talk about shrinking its balance sheet, the easy part won’t be so easy. The Fed is pulling the Easy Button.


Lending not related to financing securities holdings includes both consumer lending and commercial and industrial lending, but excludes securities financing.

These loans fell in March for the third straight month. A slight decline is common for the first month or two of the year, but the current decline has extended past the norm.


The annual growth rate has been slowing dramatically. It has now dropped to 4.4% from nearly 8.5% in mid year 2016. The current growth rate is still greater than the growth rate of the economy. But the rate and persistence of the slowdown is greater than any decline since the recession bottomed in 2009.



Loans outstanding have now been declining for a full quarter. That hasn’t happened since the current bubble lifted off in 2011. The air is now coming out of the credit bubble that has driven the markets berserk on the upside.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.co...Capture-33.png
In Part 2 of this report, we'll look at additional banking indicators that graphically show the extreme risk building in the markets.


This report is derived from Lee Adler's Wall Street Examiner Pro Trader Monthly Treasury Supply and Demand Report.

Lee first reported in 2002 that Fed actions were driving US stock prices. The US Treasury has also played a role in directly moving markets. Lee has tracked and reported on those relationships for his subscribers for the last 15 years, helping to identify major turning points in the markets in their earliest stages

COMMENTS FROM BENJAMINIS: We have more INDEPENDENT KNOWLEDGEABLE RESEARCH that the SHIP (TITANIC) is going DOWN very Fast and we will be SHORT US 30 and SPX500 and SHORT USD/JPY with CORRELATION and we will enjoy the ride and stay dry and warm...

Going into next week and provided that there is no additional threats of war this is my outlook for the USDJPY..... The USDJPY has reached the 108.50 level...It may drop another 20 pips or so... In any event if this area holds we can see the pair head back up retesting the 110.04 area by the end of the week. Therefore a retest of 109.21, 109.38 109.60 and 109.90 to the final area of 110.04...If the pair fails to hold in the 110 area we can see a decline the following week and for the remainder of the month heading towards 107.50 and the final straw in May 106.35.... If the pair holds in the 110 area then we can see a move to retest 110.35, 110.45 and 110.60... a break above 110.60 will indicate that bullishness has returned to the pair which will signal risk on trades....so lets see what happens on Monday

Hello power

Thank you for posting and sharing your views. I see that you rarely post so it is nice to see you share your views. When it comes to the subject of USD/JPY if you asked me which way it would go on Monday regardless what happens in our world I have no idea and no bias.

However what I know with certainty is that when the North America Equity Markets open with RISK OFF for whatever reason then the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) sometimes called Dow 30 and traded on our FXCM UK platform as US 30 will head down in the direction of 20,000. The Standard and Poor 500 traded as SPX500 will also go down.

That being the case then notwithstanding an extraordinary event in Japan then USD/JPY will continue down towards 100.00

Here are two charts from Finviz. First is the daily chart of US 30 followed by the daily chart of USD/JPY.

http://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?p=d1&t=YM

http://finviz.com/forex_charts.ashx?p=d1&t=USDJPY

What do you see as USD/JPY went from 118.000 to 108.56 ?

Look what US 30 did before it turned around towards 20,400.

I look forward to your thoughts.


Benjaminis

Hi

The markets are not in a normal trading cycle at the moment. Anyone trading now is trading in a fear environment. Therefore typical technical trading will not be respected in this environment. As for my thoughts on the USDJPY on a technical prospective the drop from 118.65 to 108.35 is an AB=CD pattern. In a normal market environment this is a reversal zone with a typical 23%- 38% retrace. If the market gets a break with this rumor of war stuff we can see a retrace back up towards the 110.00 zone. If this decline extends in other words the threat continues, we can see 107.50 to 106.35. The 105.00 zone is a very strong demand area, if that gets violated for whatever reason we can see a drop towards the 100 level which is a double bottom. Last week the pair dropped 300 pips and has been declining since the 118.65 area. The 110 zone was another major support level which finally got violated after the last 2 weeks dancing around in that zone. At some point we will retest the 110.00 zone which may happen next week. if the 110 zone remains as resistances, this may be a clear indication that its ready to make another leg down. Therefore we listen for the return of war threat and or other financial indications as you've kindly provided here. I agree with you not being biased. We have to trade what we see and not what we think. I figured I share my technical view of supply and demand zones. So lets wait to see how we open on Sunday and then spin towards the US markets on Monday.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2...e/#more-148193

https://www.theburningplatform.com/w...-deepwater.jpg
Heavily-Armed Swamp Critters – Did Trump Ever Stand A Chance?
Authored by Bill Bonner via InternationalMan.com,
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...edeepstate.gif
By our calculation, it took just 76 days for President Trump to get on board with the Clinton-Bush-Obama agenda.

Now there can be no doubt where he’s headed. He’s gone Full Empire.
Not that it was unexpected. But the speed with which the president abandoned his supporters and went over to the Deep State is breathtaking.

Worst Mistake
Among the noise and hubbub of the election campaign, there was one message coming from the Trump team that was music to our ears.

Middle East wars?
He was against them, he said.

He claimed to have opposed the 2003 attack on Iraq. He said it was one of the “worst mistakes” the country ever made.
As for further involvement, why waste American lives and American wealth on wars you can’t win?

“America First,” he said.
This was a refreshing position. It put the Republican neocons and Establishment Republicans against him; many went over to Hillary rather than risk giving up their think tank grants and consulting fees.

A 2013 poll showed 52% of Americans thought the U.S. should “mind its own business internationally.”

But the elite gained power and money from foreign wars; they weren’t going to give them up. Non-entitlement spending in the swamp goes largely to cronies in the military-security industry.

Pudgy Pentagon
But Donald Trump promised a “new foreign policy.”
No more trying to be the world’s policeman. No more fighting other people’s battles… and making things worse. No more wasting American money and American lives on foolish, unwinnable wars.

Ending America’s pointless and unsettling romp in the desert would be a good first move.
The bill for these misadventures is now said to be $7 trillion. As to Syria, Trump was typically direct. Don’t attack the country, he warned Barack Obama in a 2013 tweet, or “MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN…”

But then, last week… the last great hope for the Trump administration blew up in Syria. Now the neocons are delighted. And the cronies. And the zombies, too.

Here’s the outlook: no real change to O’care. No cutbacks in entitlements. No attempt to balance the budget. No belt-tightening at the pudgy Pentagon. (Instead, it will get more money.)

And now this: The wars in the Middle East will not only go on… they will accelerate.
For now, the U.S. is not only fighting terrorists. It is also fighting the people who are fighting the terrorists.

It’s a perfect Deep State war: It is guaranteed neither to win nor to lose, but simply to go on indefinitely. This gives the insiders more and more of the nation’s wealth to piddle away in absurd wars in preposterous places.

Meanwhile, Congress adjourned. When it returns in two weeks, it will confront another crisis of its own making.


Bloomberg reports:
Government funding expires on April 28, which will give Congress five days to unveil, debate, and pass an enormous spending bill… or trigger a government shutdown.

“What a mess,” said Paul Brace, a congressional expert at Rice University in Houston, offering his own pessimistic view of the unified Republican control of the House and Senate so far under President Donald Trump. “It was so much easier when all you had to do was oppose Obama.” […]

House Republicans “have differences of opinion. And they aren’t just political differences. They are policy differences,” said Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.


Old Wounds
It will be tough for Congress to come to terms with its budget. The debate will open old wounds and gouge new ones.
Already, the federal budget deficit is expected to average $1 trillion a year over the next 10 years.


Mr. Trump will want to spend more. We need to spend more on infrastructure, on the military… and to revive the economy… he’ll argue.
Many House Republicans, especially the idealists in the Freedom Caucus, will find it difficult to go along.


Some will notice, cynically, that the whole program – including the attack on Syria – is little different from what Hillary had offered.
Consumer prices are already rising, others will note. Besides, who wants to go back to his home district after having signed on to $30 trillion of U.S. debt?
Others, the activists, will want to back Trump. The Obama years have been disastrous, they will say. The typical household is little better off than it was at the bottom of the last recession.


Half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. And there are 66 million working-age adults without jobs, they’ll report.
The feds must do something! Increase spending to stimulate the economy (and not coincidentally steer a few bucks to major campaign contributors and other important hacks).



Runaway Locomotive
The more financially alert among members of Congress will recognize that eight years of stimulus has done little to help the real economy.
These realists will see a runaway locomotive headed to a dangerous curve.

They’ll want to know how the feds will finance huge new deficits just as the Fed tightens interest rates.
But the shrewdest among them will call their brokers.

The highest stock prices since the dot-com crash are based on the belief that, somehow, Team Trump will push through a corporate tax cut, leaving businesses with more after-tax money.

“That’s not going to happen,” they will say to themselves.
They will want to get out of the stock market before other investors catch on.
* * *
The “Deep State” is more dangerous than ever. It already controls just about every aspect of American life… from health care to education, from the food on our tables to the never-ending war on terror. In his latest warning, Doug Casey’s longtime friend and colleague Bill Bonner exposes how the cronies behind the Deep State have pushed the world to the brink of an irreversible disaster. Click here to learn how that disaster will unfold… and how it could change your life forever.

From my Post 1182 - To Remind Forex Traders what we teach and why.

BenjaminIs

1. | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 2,318 Posts | Online Now

Quoting KeepCalmfx
{quote} With the money flow method it takes time and research to get to the big picture, the truth. Now all of the hours you have put into researching has paid off. Now that we have a sneak peak in the future, we know that the US 30 will fall and so will the JPY. Now most of the work has been done and we just wait patiently for the price to get at a certain resistant levels to short in the trend's direction which is clearly down. Then the price will retrace again and we short again when we have our confirmation through technical analysis until something...
Good Morning Ladies and Gentleman

Before I comment on the post of KeepCalmfx , I will share my thoughts on where we are this morning. Overnight both in Asia and Europe the mood for the moment is Risk On. That may change at 8:30 AM EST or before because of Bank Earning about to come out and the big FUNDAMENTAL number for today, to set the TONE for the morning is Retail Sales. It does not matter what the actual number is to determine if we go to Risk Off because it is all about MOOD !!!

I am going to start talking more about MOOD or to explain it another way the PSYCHOLOGY of the markets and more important the PSYCHOLOGY of the Forex and other traders. Other traders include the front running Robo traders in the Equity Markets since they start the NEW MONEY FLOW each day based on what NEW FUNDAMENTAL FACTS that come out. (Please keep in mind these facts may or may not be accurate and by understanding the condition of the economy without the spin and the wrong information you definitely have an EDGE.) The best example of that is NFP and the FANTASY UI number of 4.7% that ignores 95,000,000 Million humans not in the work force.

Now to my comments and reaction to the following words of KeepCalmfx.

With the money flow method it takes time and research to get to the big picture, the truth. Now all of the hours you have put into researching has paid off. Now that we have a sneak peak in the future, we know that the US 30 will fall and so will the JPY.

COMMENTS FROM BENJAMINIS: You are correct however in your particular case you have learned a tremendous amount in under one month which confirms the work and learning ethic. My comments enforce the importance of knowing the difference between PERCEPTION AND REALITY. That goes to the PSYCHOLOGY of the people and the markets. I am going to post less information through articles because we have much already on our thread and the knowledge is there if anyone wants to read and understand it. I will start to discuss more about MOOD or as I have started to say today the PSYCHOLOGY.

Now most of the work has been done and we just wait patiently for the price to get at a certain resistant levels to short in the trend's direction which is clearly down. Then the price will retrace again and we short again when we have our confirmation through technical analysis until something change then we re-evaluate our trading plan.

COMMENTS FROM BENJAMINIS: Excellent KeepCalmfx , you now understand and now what you need to do is practice and now you just need to KEEP learning in a CALM way without FEAR or GREED as you have demonstrated that you are capable of. We again go to my new words , MOOD and PSYCHOLOGY. They are new in that now my focus starts to turn more there because of the good success of our better students. All those that have taken the time and effort have improved as the results clearly show. My own Forex Trading has improved as we have put together a team and it focuses my attention as I go through my Forex Trading day. When I am not around others here as KeepCalmfx has demonstrated can carry on. This of course includes wayfarer and other regular posters. It does not exclude some others that for the moment cannot post more regularly however they are there and will start posting and sharing in the near FUTURE.

So before you enter any position you check for big news events, watch the US30, US Dollar index and US 10 Yr bond and they will tell you if we have risk on or risk off. When we have risk off you wait for confirmation to enter a position through doing technical analysis and then you must just act in placing a position with your SL and TP.

So now trading becomes so easy and very enjoyable.

Trading without fear really makes trading so much fun. The last 2 week has been the most fun I every had trading! And we also don't need to be greedy because the next trade is just around the corner.