Learn Easy Way To Lose $2.1 Trillion In Just Six Days! & More #Insights

$2.1 Trillion Erased From U.S. Stocks In Six Days

The enormous losses reflect the deep fears gripping markets about how the world economy will fare amid a deepening economic slowdown in China.

The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq have all tumbled into correction territory, their first such 10% decline from a recent high since 2011.

The S&P 500 -- the best barometer for the biggest U.S. companies -- has lost trillions of market value in the six-day selloff through Tuesday, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

To put those losses into perspective, that's roughly equal to the combined market value of these corporate titans put together:

 Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Google(GOOGL, Tech30), Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), ExxonMobil (XOM), Facebook (FB, Tech30), Walmart(WMT) and 21st Century Fox (FOXA).

South Africa's economy contracts, risk of recession grows

PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa's economy shrank for the first time in more than a year during the second quarter of 2015, raising the risk that labour disputes and slowing Chinese demand for commodities could push it towards recession.

The economic strain will inhibit the central bank from raising rates further to protect a weak currency and target inflation, while also torpedoing government efforts to keep deficits in check and protect its credit ratings.

EU’s Migrant Crisis

A record 107,500 migrants crossed the EU borders last month to outstrip the previous monthly record in June of 70,000. During the first seven months there were nearly 340,000 migrants, up from 123,500 last year,

Warring Migrant Tribes, Grenade Attacks…What Is Going On In Sweden?

if you bring intolerant people into your country this is what can happen

Immigrants in Germany swell to record high 11 

million

 Information and Communication Technologies is radically changing the world

Not only how we deal with the world and make sense of it, or interact with each other, but also how we look at ourselves and understand our own nature, existence, and responsibilities. 

This is the IT version of my book The Great Field (available in Kindle books).

Real Household Net Worth:

 Look Out Below?

In my last post I pointed out that over the last half century, every time the year-over-year change in Real Household Net Worth went negative (real household wealth decreased), a recession had either started, or was about to.  (One bare exception: a tiny decline in Q4 2011, which looks rather like turbulence following The Big Whatever.) Throughout, click for source. - 

The problem: we don’t see this quarterly number until three+ months after the end of a quarter, when the Fed releases its Z.1 report for the the preceding quarter. The Q2 2015 report is due September 18.

But right now we might be able to roughly predict what we’re going to see four+ months from now, in the report on our current quarter, Q3, which ends September 30. We’re a bit over a month from the end the quarter, and we have some numbers to hand.

The U.S. equity markets are down roughly 7% year-over-year

Learning Success: 

APPLY Tips From The Best

Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group – Anyone who owns more than 400 companies and is worth billions of dollars is clearly doing many things right. I admire Richard Branson’s tenacity, and I admire his personal brand

Are You Prepared For Big Bear? & More Top Insights

Is It Time To Get Into Crash Positions?

Maybe this flight won't go into a tailspin; perhaps it simply runs out of fuel.

With stock markets diving around the globe, a pressing question arises: is it time to get into Crash Positions?

In case you forgot how to get into Crash Positions, here's a reminder:

After a dizzying 500+ point drop in the Dow on Friday, should we brace for impact? There are plenty of fundamental and technical reasons to view the swoon this week as the initial downturn that presages a crash landing.

But if we look at the last equivalent spike down in October 2014, we're not so sure. Both spikes (October 2014 and August 2015) smashed through the lower Bollinger band, but the volume in last week's plummet was nothing special compared to the 2014 swoon.

Big moves have a bit more credence if they're accompanied by massive volume.

Greek bailout: Alexis Tsipras steps down to trigger new elections 

The prime minister insisted in an address on public television that he was proud of his time in office and had got “a good deal for the country”, despite bringing it “close to the edge”. He added that he was “shortly going to submit my resignation, and the resignation of my government, to the president”. The prime minister will be replaced for the duration of the short campaign by the president of Greece’s supreme court, Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou – a vocal bailout opponent – as head of a caretaker government.

From Russia to Iran, the consequences of the global oil bust

Nick Butler, former head of strategy for BP, told me, “We are in for a longer and more sustained period of low oil prices than in the late 1980s.” Why? He points to a perfect storm. Supply is up substantially because a decade of high oil prices encouraged producers throughout the world to invest vast amounts of money in finding new sources. Those investments are made and will keep supply flowing for years. Leonardo Maugeri, former head of strategy for the Italian energy giant Eni, says, “There is no way to stop this phenomenon.” He predicts that prices could actually drop to $35 per barrel next year, down from more than $105 last summer.

Greece bailout deal 'will not work': Varoufakis

"Ask anyone who knows anything about Greece's finances and they will tell you this deal is not going to work.""The Greek finance minister... says more or less the same thin,

Germany made €100bn profit on Greek crisis

Greece’s biggest creditor Germany has made a huge profit on the country’s debt crisis over the last 5 years as it saved through lower interest payments on funds borrowed amid investor “flights to safety.”

Pentagon Fears It’s Not Ready for a War With Russia

The U.S. military has run the numbers on a sustained fight with Moscow, and they do not look good for the American side.

The Dow Correction And Everything Else That Went Wrong in Stocks

The global equity selloff that sent benchmark indexes to their worst week in four years played havoc with individual stocks and industries in the U.S. market.

To energy shares already snared in a bear market, add semiconductor stocks, which crossed the threshold by capping a decline of more than 20 percent. Apple Inc. also entered a bear market, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average entered a so-called correction with a decline of 10 percent from its last record. Biotechnology, small caps, media, transportation and commodity companies have also entered corrections.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index sank 3.2 percent on Friday to cap a weekly loss of 5.8 percent, the worst daily and weekly declines in almost four years. The benchmark gauge is down 7.5 percent from its last record in May, after dropping out of a trading range that has supported it for most of the year.

Learning Success: 

APPLY Tips From The Best

Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group – 

Anyone who owns more than 400 companies and is worth billions of dollars is clearly doing many things right. I admire Richard Branson’s tenacity, and I admire his personal brand

Dow Losing Streak Ain't Over 'Til Its Over, & More Top Insights

Dow 7-day losing streak worst since debt-ceiling crisis

U.S. stocks closed lower Friday, with the Dow industrials hitting its worst losing streak since 2011’s debt-ceiling crisis, after the jobs report matched economists’ estimates, boosting the chances for a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike in September.

The nonfarm-payrolls report showed that the U.S. gained 215,000 jobs in July, largely matching expectations, and the unemployment rate stayed pat at 5.3%.

The solid employment data offers little reason to upend Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s plan to lift rates, possibly at the next two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, which begins on Sept. 16.

“The jobs report doesn’t increase the likelihood that the [Federal Reserve] will raise rates in September, but it also doesn’t decrease the likelihood,” Randy Frederick, managing director of Schwab Center for Financial Research, told MarketWatch.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.27%  declined 46.37 points, or 0.3%, to 17,373.38, after having been down as many as 141 points earlier in the session. With seven straight days of losses, it marks the longest losing streak for the index since the height of the debt-ceiling drama in the summer of 2011.

Banks, miners drive Australian share market collapse

The Australian sharemarket dived again today as banking stocks tumbled in the wake of ANZ’s capital raising while trading was also soured by resource shares after a major writedown from explosives and blasting systems firm Orica.

At the 4.15pm (AEST) official market close, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 was 135.3 points, or 2.41 per cent, lower at 5474.8, while the broader All Ordinaries index had fallen 127.8 points, or 2.28 per cent, to 5472.3.

The result put the ASX200 at about 3.7 below last Friday’s close of 5699.2, more than offsetting last week’s gains of 2.4 per cent.

The market fell initially on weaker banking stocks as ANZ slumped sharply. The lender emerged from a trading halt this morning after announcing a $3 billion capital raising yesterday.

Forget the Fake Statistics: China Is a Tinderbox

When China's tinderbox economy implodes, who will be left to bid up the world's surplus commodities and real estate?

After 30 years of torrid expansion, perhaps the single most consequential factor in China’s economy is how much of it is a “black box”: a system with visible inputs and outputs whose internal workings are opaque.

There are number of reasons for this lack of transparency:

1. Official statistics reflect what officials want to project, not the unfiltered data.

2. Policy decisions are made behind closed doors by a handful of leaders.

3. There is little institutional history of transparency.

4. Many important statistics are self-reported and prone to distortion.

5. Large sectors of the economy are informal and difficult if not impossible to measure accurately.

6. Endemic corruption distorts critical economic yardsticks.

7. There is little historical precedent to guide policy makers and individual investors.

Saudi Arabia may go broke before the US oil industry buckles

Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years or face draconian austerity. Social spending is the glue that binds a medieval Wahhabi regime midst unrest among the Shia minority, attacks from ISIS, and the invasion of Yemen. Diplomatic spending is what underpins the Saudi sphere of influence in a Middle East version of Europe's Thirty Year War. 

Che Guevara Portrait to Appear Next to Pope Francis during Mass

How Germany Prevailed in the Greek Bailout

Germany persuaded European leaders to rally more firmly around what might be called the Berlin consensus by a combination of patient diplomacy and clever brinkmanship and by exploiting alarm over the antics of Greece’s leaders

China's July exports slump 8%, raises pressure for more stimulus

Chinese exports tumbled 8.3 percent in July, their biggest drop in four months and far worse than expected, reinforcing expectations that Beijing will be forced to roll out more stimulus to support the world's second-largest economy.

Imports also fell heavily from a year earlier, in line with market forecasts but suggesting domestic demand might be too feeble to offset the weaker global demand for China's exports.

Brazil's worst economic downturn in 25 years just ahead of Rio 2016

Brasilia: Allies of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff have turned to her opponents to talk about filling what they see as a damaging leadership vacuum after losing confidence in her ability to pull the country out of an economic tailspin, party insiders said on Thursday.

Brazil's worst economic downturn in 25 years has undercut confidence in Ms Rousseff's leadership and raised the spectre of her impeachment just six months into her second term.

Shale Gas Reality Check

In October 2014, Post Carbon Institute published the results of what likely remains the most thorough independent analysis of U.S. shale gas and tight oil production ever conducted. The process of drilling for shale gas and tight oil is known colloquially as “fracking” and has drawn a great deal of controversy—considered by some as an energy revolution and others as an environmental and human health catastrophe.

Top Weekly Ideas and Insights

An Inconvenient Truth

"Eurasia BIG Bang" 

What Happens When Geo-Political Shifts Occur?

EXISTENTIAL REALITY 

"Humanity's Coming of Age"

 - Last Days: Hegemony or Survival -