Friday, November 8, 2013

Whopping 932,000 Americans Drop Out Of Labor Force In October; Participation Rate Drops To Fresh 35 Year Low

The only two charts that matter from today's distroted nonfarm payrolls report.
First, the labor force participation rate, which plunged from 63.2% to 62.8% - the lowest since 1978!
[2]
But more importantly, the number of people not in the labor force exploded by nearly 1 million, or 932,000 to be exact, in just the month of October, to a record 91.5 million Americans! This was the third highest monthly increase in people falling out of the labor force in US history.
[3]
At this pace the people out of the labor force will surpass the working Americans in about 4 years.

http://www.zerohedge.com/print/481190

Thursday, November 7, 2013

ECB surprise rate cut sends Euro crashing


In a shocking move, the ECB cut the interest rate by 25 basis points to .25%.


At today’s meeting the Governing Council of the ECB took the following monetary policy decisions:
  1. The interest rate on the main refinancing operations of the Eurosystem will be decreased by 25 basis points to 0.25%, starting from the operation to be settled on 13 November 2013.
  2. The interest rate on the marginal lending facility will be decreased by 25 basis points to 0.75%, with effect from 13 November 2013.
  3. The interest rate on the deposit facility will remain unchanged at 0.00%.
The President of the ECB will comment on the considerations underlying these decisions at a press conference starting at 2.30 p.m. CET today.

EUR/USD Hourly chart



ECB Press Conference Live on FJ at 8:30 ET http://www.financialjuice.com

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Rich families hoarding cash: Citi

A new survey of family offices by Citi finds that the wealthy are cash heavy—meaning they may fall short of the investment returns they're expecting.
Wealthy families have about 39 percent of their assets in cash, according to a recent poll of more than 50 large family office representatives from 20 countries conducted by Citi Private Bank.
Stocks represented about 25 percent of portfolios on average. Bonds were about 17 percent of the asset mix and various classes of less liquid and alternative investments amounted to 19 percent.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101157290

The Wall Street Code

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-11-04/wall-street-code-released

Friday, November 1, 2013

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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

DOJ confirms criminal investigation of Forex manipulation by banks

Oct 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the manipulation of foreign exchange rates, a top federal prosecutor said on Tuesday, in the first public acknowledgement of such a probe in the United States.
Criminal and antitrust authorities have an "active, ongoing investigation" into the possible manipulation, Mythili Raman, the acting head of the department's criminal division, said.
The confirmation comes on the same day Dutch bank Rabobank agreed to pay more than $1 billion to resolve allegations that it manipulated Libor and other benchmark rates. And other European banks that face related probes disclosed they set aside major sums to cover legal costs.
 Deutsche Bank confirmed it was cooperating with regulators probing the foreign exchange market as investigators across the globe look into the multi-trillion industry that sets foreign currency rates.

Banks fined over Libor scandal

Dutch bank Rabobank says it has agreed to pay fines of 774m euros ($1bn; £662m) imposed by US, UK and Dutch regulators over the Libor interest rate-fixing scandal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24730242

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Europe’s largest investment bank by revenue, said third-quarter profit slid 94 percent after it set aside 1.2 billion euros ($1.65 billion) to cover potential legal costs and income from debt trading fell.
Net income in the three months through September dropped to 41 million euros from 747 million euros in the year-earlier period, the Frankfurt-based bank said in a statement on its website today. That missed the 430 million-euro average estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/deutsche-bank-profit-falls-94-as-trading-revenue-slumps.html

Nasdaq indexes resume trading

The Nasdaq was hit with another market glitch on Tuesday, as index data froze just before lunchtime and remained frozen for nearly an hour.
In a statement at 12:15 p.m. ET, Nasdaq OMX Group said it was looking into an issue with index data feeds. Stocks on Nasdaq were trading normally, however.
The indexes resumed normal quotation just after 12:37 p.m. ET, Nasdaq said.
Before the freeze, the Composite index last stood at 3,940.02. Once it resumed, it rose 3 points to 3,943.
(Read more: Nasdaq takes responsibility for August 'flash freeze')
Nasdaq also reported at one point that some options had halted trading because of a lack of index data. That trading was set to resume starting at 12:55 p.m. ET.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101151953

Former PFG customers approached with Phishing attack

It was extremely disconcerting for NFA to learn earlier this month that fraudsters were soliciting customers and creditors of Peregrine Financial Group (PFG) who currently are awaiting the resolution of their claims by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Former PFG customers called NFA to inquire about the legitimacy of an email that was sent on October 4. The email requested personal information from the recipients, and insinuated that if this information was provided, they would receive $250,000.
Upon learning of the email, NFA immediately worked with the PFG bankruptcy trustee to verify that it was a fraud, and sent an announcement to PFG's customers to notify them of the email's illegitimacy. NFA also posted a notice from the trustee about the deceptive email on the homepage of its website to warn visitors and Members of the fraud.
This type of online scam is known as "spear phishing"—where fraudsters target specific groups of people who share a commonality and trick them into divulging their personal information via email. Perpetrators typically get hold of some form of inside information to deceive the list of recipients, like the list of PFG customers, and then send a legitimate-looking message, typically citing urgent and plausible-sounding explanations as to why they need your personal data.
Once the fraudsters have your personal information, they can access your bank accounts, credit cards and even create new identities.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation suggests keeping the following points in mind to avoid becoming a spear phishing victim:
  • Most companies, banks, agencies, etc. don't request personal information via email. If you're ever in doubt about the veracity of an email, call the sender. However, don't use the phone number contained in the email—that's typically also phony.
  • Use a phishing filter; many current web browsers have them built in or offer them as plug-ins
  • Never follow a link to a website from an email—always enter the URL manually
  • Don't be fooled by the latest scams
Additionally, October is National Cyber Security Awareness month for the National Consumers League, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance. According to their list of the top 10 reported scams of 2012, phishing ranked No. 4—the second-most common form of online fraud. The group suggests people take note of the following online safety habits to avoid falling prey to scammers.
You likely have heard the famous adage, "there is no honor among thieves." The venerable Sir John Falstaff bemoaned this very point in "Henry IV, Part 1." So please beware when you receive seemingly legitimate emails that request any personal information.

http://www.nfa.futures.org/NFA-investor-information/investor-newsletter/index.HTML#Phishing

Monday, October 28, 2013

EES: What is Hybrid Trading





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Sunday, October 27, 2013

How to Protect Your Money When the U.S. Debt Bill Comes Due

You don’t want to be around when that bill comes due!
Well, as a quasi-government organization with the authority to suck down your hard-earned money through the act of inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve is “that guy,” and you could be the responsible one left with its bill.
Did you know that the Fed has been inflating the supply of dollars at a stunning 33% annual rate over the past five years? Or that it plans to continue inflating the supply of dollars at least into 2014 and has kept open the possibility that it will do so indefinitely?
When the Fed’s party is over, who do you think will be left with the bill?
Not the Wall Street bankers! We’ve learned that lesson already.
It’s Main Street investors like you who get the bill.
But you can protect yourself -- though your window of safety is closing rapidly.
Robert Prechter, market forecaster and leading opponent of the Federal Reserve, has just released a report that that will help you understand the risks of deflation that most mainstream sources cannot see because they are blinded by decades of inflationary Fed policy.
At just 8 pages, "How to Protect Your Money When the U.S. Debt Bill Comes Due" is a quick read -- well worth any independent investor’s time.
Follow this link to download your free deflation-protection report now >>
Report Excerpt:
The Federal Reserve's efforts to rescue the economy have been historically aggressive, starting with the initial round of quantitative easing in 2008 and continuing through 2013.
The central bank's assets have skyrocketed due to the Fed's bond purchases, which you can see clearly in this eye-opening report that Robert Prechter presented to the Market Technicians Association and his Elliott Wave Theorist subscribers.
The main reason investors are expecting runaway inflation is illustrated in [the chart above], which shows the value of assets held at the Federal Reserve. The Fed has been inflating the supply of dollars at a stunning 33% annual rate over the past five years. ... [N]o wonder investors expect inflation and have aggressively positioned for it.
Look just about anywhere else, however, and you will see subtle evidence of deflationary pressures. Given knowledge only of the Fed’s inflating, many people would expect the Producer and Consumer Price Indexes to be rising at a rate of 33% annually. But, as you can see in Figure 2, the PPI’s annual rate of change is stuck at zero and the CPI has been rising at only a 2% rate.
In an interview at the recent San Francisco Money Show with financial author Jim Mosquera, EWI's Chief Market Analyst Steven Hochberg explains why the Fed has gotten so little in return from its stimulus programs. Here's a brief excerpt from the interview published on Aug. 18 on the Examiner.com website.
Question: The Fed wizards have been pushing buttons and pulling levers rather furiously since 2008. The discount rate is rock bottom, and the Fed balance sheet has swelled to the tune of trillions. What button is left for them to push?
Steve Hochberg: That is a really interesting question the way you phrased it because the fact that they have been pushing buttons and have gotten very little in return tells us … that the Fed is not in control. The Fed does not control the markets, and it doesn’t control the economy. Both are bigger than the Fed.
You say they have been doing this furiously. They have been doing this historically! Yet if you look at inflationary measures, such as the Personal Consumption Expenditures, which is the Fed's favorite way of measuring inflation, it's bumping along at 1%.
We have had historic fiscal and monetary stimulus and yet no inflation. Why? The forces of deflation are overwhelming the forces of inflation. The Fed dropped interest rates in 2000 to 2002 and that did not stop the Nasdaq from dropping 78%. The Fed dropped rates from 2007 to 2009 and it did not stop the Dow from going down 59%. There is historical evidence that the Fed does not control the markets but that the markets control the Fed.
As the next leg of the bear market starts unfolding, they are going to do more unconventional things. Things will accelerate to the downside when the public realizes the central banks aren't in control.
For a limited time, you can read Robert Prechter’s 6-page report to prepare for what EWI sees ahead. In this report you'll learn why the risk of deflation is mounting and how you can see it coming in the prices of gold, gas, real estate, crude oil and other markets.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article42863.html

The Distinction Between Human And Algo-Trading

Submitted by The World Complex
One more time--the distinction between human- and algo-trading
The markets do not act like they once did. The trading in certain stocks is operating on time-scales so small that they cannot be in response to human thought. Not only are certain individuals able to access key information before others and so respond to news releases faster than the speed of light, but certain entities have free range to post and cancel orders on a microsecond basis, and queue-jump by shaving off (or adding on) tiny fractions of a penny from their orders.
Stocks traded by humans tend to make significant moves on a timescale of minutes to days. Even when there is a news event that radically changes the apparent value of a company, if there are only humans in the market, the move takes time to occur. Below are a couple of charts for Detour Gold (I currently have no position in this stock)
Normally, when looked at on a ms timescale, the graph is not really distinguishable from a straight line.
The little squares occur because all the price-changes I saw in the course of the day were a penny. On this scale it scarcely matters which axis is the current price and which is the lagged-price.
Once the algos get involved, the millisecond phase space plots get a lot more interesting. Some of them are works of art! Below, some plots for Century Casinos (I have no position in this one, either). Data here.


Algos playing tug-o-war.
Nice to look at, but maybe not so nice to trade against.
Remember the adage about playing poker: If you don't know who the sucker is 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-26/distinction-between-human-and-algo-trading

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Obamacare Nightmare






http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2013/10/20131026_obamacare.jpg

 As for Obamacare, the hits just keep on coming:
“I feel like we’re sort of back in the era of control-alt-delete where we’re trying to figure out the different tricks that facilitate people’s enrollment,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, director of health policy for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that has been helping to publicize the Affordable Care Act.

The administration for the first time on Friday said it expected the health exchange website serving 36 states should be in good shape in about a month. “We’re confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users,” said Jeff Zients, the former White House aide and management expert brought into oversee the repair drive.

But for now, with HealthCare.gov crippled by design flaws and a morass of messy code, the president and health officials have been using a variety of posts and announcements to urge people to try low-tech ways of enrolling. Basically they are saying while the front door is stuck, try the side.
This is where it gets really funny:
Of course, reading an 800 number on national TV — as the president did in the Rose Garden the other day — created a flood of callers who couldn’t get through. That led to another wave of frustration and Obamacare punch lines. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tweeted on Thursday that HHS bulked up the call center to include more than 10,000 trained representatives.

POLITICO reporters who got recorded announcements earlier in the week — sometimes directing them to try HealthCare.gov — can now get through to the call center. Once they connect, staffers like “Justin” try to get people’s information into the online system.

But “Justin” doesn’t have a fast track. Asked if the website works better for him than the general public, he responded: “No.”

“The site does not work for us either,” he said.
Raucous laughter aside, there really are no words to describe the gross incompetence that has been revealed, even if many knew long ago that when the government really sets its mind to it, it can screw something up better than the entire private sector possibly ever could.
And since there are no words, back to the raucous laughter:
Sometime, the call center staff can get in and process the application while the caller waits. If not, the staff can take the information, put it in a PDF and finish later. Even then, it’s just the application — once that’s processed, the customer still has to call back or get online to select the specific health plan they want and enroll.

People do not have to stay on hold indefinitely — a good thing because Sebelius said earlier in the week that the center has handled about 1.6 million calls.

It’s similar in the world of paper applications.
Even before the tech problems, the government had a private contractor, Serco, to handle paper applications, which were expected to come primarily from less Web-savvy people. On Thursday, the company’s program director John Lau told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that it had completed between 3,000 and 4,000 applications.

Lau said the company does have the capacity to handle more than what’s expected — a paper surge. But he also said the customer’s data has to be entered into the Web portal and hinted there could be problems if volume dramatically increases. Lau didn’t say how long that takes, but a customer service representative said it would take about three weeks to complete the enrollment process.

“Our challenges have included coping with the performance of the portal as that is our means of entering data just as it is for the consumer,” Lau said, referring to HealthCare.gov. “With the relatively low volumes of applications we have received thus far, this has not been a problem for us.”

But Serco will be flooded with paper applications if the website glitches persist, predicted John Gorman, founder of the Gorman Health Group, which has advised some of the insurance exchanges. “Serco is going to be swimming in paper within the next two to three weeks,” he said.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-26/obamacares-website-debacles-migrate-paper-phone-applications

Friday, October 25, 2013

Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website

Posted By Patrick Howley On 4:57 PM 10/25/2013 In | No Comments
First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.
Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.
Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.
Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998
George Schindler, the president for U.S. and Canada of the Canadian-based CGI Group, CGI Federal’s parent company, became an Obama 2012 campaign donor after his company gained the Obamacare website contract.
As reported by the Washington Examiner in early October, the Department of Health and Human Services reviewed only CGI’s bid for the Obamacare account. CGI was one of 16 companies qualified under the Bush administration to provide certain tech services to the federal government. A senior vice president for the company testified this week before The House Committee on Energy and Commerce that four companies submitted bids, but did not name those companies or explain why only CGI’s bid was considered.
On the government end, construction of the disastrous Healthcare.gov website was overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of longtime failed website-builder Kathleen Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services.
Update: The Daily Caller repeatedly contacted CGI Federal for comment. After publication of this article, the company responded that there would be “nothing coming out of CGI for the record or otherwise today.” The company did however insist that The Daily Caller include a reference to vice president Cheryl Campbell’s House testimony. This has been included as a courtesy to the company.
Follow Patrick on Twitter

http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-is-executive-at-company-that-built-obamacare-website/?print=1

NSA Website Hacked Ahead Of "Stop Watching Us" Rally

Update: As of 6:30 pm Eastern, the NSA's website has been down for 5 hours.
Following our earlier comments on the vulnerabilities of the Obamacare websites, the fact that the United States National Security Agency suddenly went offline Friday is still surprising. As RT reports [11], NSA.gov has been unavailable globally as of late Friday afternoon, and Twitter accounts belonging to people loosely affiliated with the Anonymous hacktivism movement have suggested they are responsible.


It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that there is a major “Stop Watching Us” rally scheduled for Saturday [12] in Washington, DC.
[12]

where the following letter was sent to Congress:
Dear Members of Congress,
We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.
The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.
Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information" for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.
This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.
We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's and the FBI's data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:
  1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
  2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
  3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Via RT, [11]
Twitter users @AnonymousOwn3r and @TruthIzSexy both were quick to comment on the matter, and implied that a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS, may have been waged as an act of protest against the NSA

 http://www.zerohedge.com/print/480628




Allegations that those users participated in the DDoS — a method of over-loading a website with too much traffic — are currently unverified, and @AnonymousOwn3r has previously taken credit for downing websites in a similar fashion, although those claims have been largest contested.


The question, of course, is whether this is retalization from Europe (or Brazil) for the 'denied' allegations over spying?