Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Is Retirement Account Confiscation Coming?

from Financial Survival Network
John Jamieson is as concerned about retirement account confiscation as we are. He thinks it would lead to a near revolution. However the government can do things short of confiscation that could achieve a similar result, so you need to be prepared. With that in mind, Jon has a number of ways to invest in annuities, which we don’t necessarily believe you should put all or a substantial part of your money into, but may be good as a diversification technique. We’re not telling you to give up your gold and silver by any stretch. However, Jon’s annuities do seem attractive and certainly warrant some additional investigation.
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Ex-Soros Adviser Fujimaki Sees JGB Bust From Tax Delay, Fed

by Mariko Ishikawa & Yumi Ikeda
Bloomberg.com

Takeshi Fujimaki, a former adviser to billionaire investor George Soros who won a seat in Japan’s upper house of parliament last month, said a delay in increasing the sales tax and reduction of Federal Reserve stimulus could cause the nation’s government bond “bubble” to burst.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration plans to release later this year its medium-term fiscal plans and a final decision on a two-step doubling of the consumption levy to 10 percent in 2015. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in June the U.S. central bank may start scaling down its third round of quantitative easing of asset purchases this year and end it altogether in mid-2014.
Continue Reading at Bloomberg.com…
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Buy the Breakout on This Bank for 33% Gains: Bank of America (NYSE: BAC)

Over the past month, all 10 sectors on the S&P have ridden the wave of a rising market higher. But with a 6.7% gain, the financial sector has been one of the best performers as group.

Breaking this statistic down further, within the financial sector, banking stocks are particularly hot with Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) as a clear winner among banks.

While behemoths Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) have each risen about 7% in the past month, BAC has more than doubled that performance, increasing nearly 16% over the same period.

Strong second-quarter results underlie BAC's gain. The bank is once again firing on all cylinders. On July 17, it reported "improvements in net interest income, investment and brokerage income, investment banking fees, sales and trading revenue, equity investment income ... as well as expense reductions," pushing quarterly revenue up 3% to $22.9 billion from $22.2 billion in the year ago quarter. Earnings skyrocketed, increasing 68% to $0.32 per share from $0.19 per share in the year-earlier period.  (more)

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Comex Loses 40% of its Gold in 6 Months — SRS Rocco



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Bollinger Bandwidth: Rare Volatility Indicator Helps Spot Price Breakouts

Bollinger Bandwidth is one of the few technical indicators that measures volatility.

Most indicators use price and attempt to identify trend changes. Bollinger Bandwidth measures how strong the recent trend is. It does not offer any information about whether prices will go up or down in the future. Instead the indicator highlights periods of high or low volatility. Traders generally prefer high volatility because fast price moves can result in fast profits.

This technical indicator measures the distance between the upper and lower Bollinger Bands. The Bands contract and expand with volatility. Bollinger Bandwidth quantifies the volatility and can be added to the chart to help spot when big price moves are likely to occur. Volatility tends to move in a cyclical pattern, and big price moves often follow periods of low volatility.

Bollinger Bandwidth is calculated by taking the difference between the upper Band and the lower Band and dividing that difference by the moving average of the closing prices (i.e., the middle Band). The indicator will always be between 0 and 100, with low values corresponding to low volatility and high values corresponding to high volatility. It can be used in any time frame. (more)

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The rich are saving cash at a record pace

It seems so long ago. But in 2009, many of the wealthy were stunned to find themselves in a cash crunch. Despite all the talk of cash cushions and risk management, many of the wealthy suddenly realized that they had overborrowed, overspent and overconcentrated on a single asset or industry.

We had suddenly entered the new age of the High-Beta Rich, where the wealth was volatile and far more cash was needed to absorb the shocks of financial markets.

Four years later, the lesson still holds.

A study from Spectrem Group asked wealthy and affluent investors "what do you wish you had done differently in the crisis."  (more)

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