They say the measure of a man’s character is not determined by how he handles his wins, but how he handles his failures. And so I give a lot of credit to the CEO of Boeing, CEO Dennis Muilenburg. He dealing with the aftermath of not one, but two fatal Boeing plane crashes that happen within a span of six months.
In March, an Ethiopian Airlines crashed killing 149 passengers and eight crew members on board shortly after takeoff. The incident was the second deadly crash of the new Boeing planes in less than five months. A Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 plunged into the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta in October, killing all 189 people on board.
The culprit, Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), suspected of reacting to errant sensor data, the solution, a software update. Today, all 737MAX 8 planes around the world remain grounded.
The CEO thinks by the fourth quarter Boeing will have a software fix and the 737MAX 8 planes will be in service again. There’s only one issue, while actually two. Boeing is running out of time in maintaining investor confidence and they are running out of 737MAX8 storage room. To maintain investor confidence, Boeing decided to cut the production rate from 52 to 42 737MAX8s. But one solution created another problem. As planes are being built, there is no place to store them.
And now Boeing has been forced to resort to some creative storage places, like the employee parking lot.
Although the CEO remains confident, the Smart Money begs to differ. Yesterday I noticed some bearish unusual option activity where the Smart Money bought almost 7500 of the October put options with a strike price at $275.
This means the Smart Money thinks Boeing has more downside.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
The CBOE Volatility Index, VIX aka the stock market fear gauge, is a popular measure of the stock market’s expectation of volatility implied.
Devesh Shah, an applied mathematician and hedge fund manager who formerly worked for Goldman Sachs, was one of the creators of the CBOE Volatility Index
The VIX is quoted in percentage points and is the expected annualized change in the S&P 500 index over the following 30 days, with a 68% probability. VIX values greater than 30 represent investor fear or uncertainty, while values below 20 represent complacent in the Markets.
Just in the past week, we have seen Fed Powell cut US interest rates in attempt to keep the party going, President Trump issue more tariffs on Chinese goods, 900 DOW stock plunge and what appears to be the start of a currency war.
Experts say there could be lots more bad news to come for stocks this month beyond Monday’s big selloff. That’s because August is typically the year’s weakest month for U.S. equities.
Stock Trader’s Almanac Editor Jeffrey Hirsh blames the month’s historically weak performance woes on summer vacations that take investors’ eyes off of the market. “Everyone is in the Hamptons, out playing golf or in the backyard with the kids,” he said. “So, you get a vacuum of lower volumes, and the path of least resistance is down.”
LPL Financial found that while the S&P 500 hasn’t fallen every August, in the years that it’s done so since 1990, losses have averaged 4.6% — the worst showing for any month during that period.
So any one long the Equity Markets or who have family members with IRAs and/or 401ks, buy some protection and hedge your hard earn dollars. One way to hedge your portfolio is to buy VIX call options if you think volatility in the Markets are going to increase over the next 3-6 months.
And the newest alternative at our disposal as a hedge, is to buy BITCOIN.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
In Elliott Wave terms, Prometeus began a wave one advance on July 16. The red wave one (blue sub-waves i-ii-iii-iv-v) finished on July 22, and the red wave two (blue sub-waves a-b-c) correction ended on July 29. If this wave count is correct, Prometeus should be heading next towards the July 22 peak in the red wave three.
Prometeus is a Blockchain & AI enhanced ecosystem for the people owned data markets. BlockchainBrad interviewed one of the team members back in June this year.
Crypto is an exciting market and offers a host of opportunities to the ‘engaged’ investor. However, the space does exhibit its own peculiarities, some of which complicate the process of successfully investing in the asset class.
There are over-arching investment rules and there are those that apply more specifically to crypto. Research is an example of a shared investment process across all assets classes. However, there is one area where blockchain diverges somewhat from other assets – timelines.
Crypto is replete with glossy websites sporting detailed timelines, with a neat line of progress highlighting all that we have to look forward to in the coming quarters and years.
Rule of thumb – Crypto Project Timelines are Wildly Optimistic
They are guidelines only. All those shiny development points/partnerships/roll-outs etc. are conceptual in nature and the only thing you can take for granted is that as a rule: they will be missed, over-promised and under-delivered. Generally, there’s absolutely no point asking the Telegram admins about roadmap deadlines because they know about as much as you do.
Crypto projects are essentially software start-ups. As such, they face a number of specific challenges.
a) Software development – the broad strokes of a blockchain may indeed flow quickly but as with most things – the devil is in the details. As blockchain involves the storing and transacting of value such details inevitably slow down development even if the team has the necessary talent to deliver on their promises.
The last leg of software development is the most demanding as any bug can undo the whole network. This partially explains why most projects seem close to hitting roadmap release but just don’t quite get there …again and again and again.
The more decentralized the chain the longer any developments are likely to take. This complicates investor project assessment as centralized coins can seem to be pulling ahead of their more distributed brethren when, in fact, it is only their limitations that allow the appearance of progress.
b) Partnerships – a blockchain in a vacuum is hardly a revenue generator – partnerships and many of them are required in order to generate network effects and revenue streams. Such deals almost always take longer than expected. Remember an announcement of a partnership does not a partnership make -it is only the first step in a long and often winding road.
c) Regulatory hurdles – blockchains cross borders and often have global reach with that come a host of regulatory issues that need to be addressed. Given the lack of clarity re blockchain regulations in most jurisdictions – substantial delays are all but inevitable.
Realistic Adjusted Timeline for Blockchain Roadmaps
I use the following sliding scale when assessing project promises and roadmaps:
Decentralized projects such as BTC and ETH add 2 to 3 years to any proposed change or improvement.
Semi-decentralized projects such as EOS add 1 year to any ‘official’ roll-out.
Centralized projects such as Ripple add 6 months to any timeline.
Of course, even these adjusted timelines will often end up being entirely too optimistic but it should help make more ‘realistic’ investment decisions.
Examples of how an adjusted time preference might help you as an investor:
Buying Ethereum because it is set to scale in 6 months seems a lot less attractive if you change that to 2 to 3 years. ETH is substantially decentralized – changes cannot be pushed through – delay, debate, and slow implementation are to be expected and planned for. In practical terms, this has led me to hold off on accumulating ETH (aside from small-dollar cost average purchases) until it retraces substantially – a retracement which seems likely as investors lose patience with the slow pace of development.
Assessing the value proposition of Bitcoin with the underlying understanding of its inherently slow development precisely because it is actually decentralized takes the gloss off a lot of centralized, corporate-driven pseudo-cryptos like XRP. The realization that BTC changes very slowly and is designed to do so makes it a lot easier to hold over the long-term as your expectations for change now more closely match the asset itself. BTC has done a much better job of communicating its decentralized nature in comparison to ETH – likely leading to far less disillusionment with its inherently slow pace of development.
Remember this?
Realizing the even a 4 billion dollar war-chest and a team of over 100 developers doesn’t result in met deadlines could have saved you a lot of money as was the case with EOS. After months of hype on June 1st, they announced Voice – which it soon emerged couldn’t be deployed until the rollout of a network upgrade – that upgrade being scheduled for the end of September (at the earliest).
Effectively, they held an event the central showcase of which won’t go live until the end of the year – if everything goes to plan. This information was slow in coming resulting in a long slow bleed-out of EOS value.
In summary, roadmaps and project promises are guidelines – almost always too optimistic in terms of both delivery and effect – invest with these dual realities in mind.
The foreign exchange market is where currencies are traded. When investors trade foreign exchange (forex or FX for short) they’re buying and selling currencies over the foreign exchange market.
The forex market is the largest and most traded financial market in the world. The forex market has grown to a daily trade volume of over $5 trillion a day which is over 200 times bigger than the New York Stock Exchange.
I try to stick to the major currencies and the minor currencies. The majors are the currencies of the major global economies – the US, Japan, UK, Euro Zone, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand and stay away from the exotic currencies because they are a lot less liquid and prone to “slippage” and it also means they have wider spreads than the majors and the crosses. However, I at least pay attention to them…at least from a distance.
The Thailand currency is call the Baht. And as strong as the US dollar has been against all the major currencies this year, I was shock to read that the Baht has been outperforming the US dollar this year (+5%) and year over year (+8).
But this isn’t necessary good for the Thailand as their exports have become more expensive and so will ultimately hurt their economy. This is why Trump has been fighting with China for the last 1.5 years. Our trade balance with China is so lopsided as a result of China continuing to depreciate their currency whenever it suits their best interests.
Anyway, back to the Baht, is there any hope for the country of Thailand in regards to a cheaper Baht, lets go to the charts to find out?
Monthly Chart (Curve Time Frame) – monthly supply is at 35.750 and monthly demand is at 29.000.
Weekly Chart (Trend Time Frame) – the trend is down.
Daily Chart (Entry Time Frame) – the chart suggests to short price on a pull back to the daily supply at 31.350 with a target just above the top the of the monthly zone.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
… BITCOIN is now testing the Upper Resistance line within the Bullish Flag.
And, as I wrote in this post a couple of days ago, there are two options, both of them positive:
OPTION 1:
Correction is done and we are in wave three of the continuation of the Uptrend.
OPTION 2:
Still one retest of the lower ground of the Bullish Flag would be expected on (e) around 8250 USD in order to end the II wave in violet, then, strong rebound upwards.
24 Hours Volume seems to support the breakage of the upper resistance and also the RSI on the Daily still show a healthy status since it is moving within the limits.
Trend is our friend so, wait to see next move and decide wisely.
Disclaimer: This is just my personal point of view, please, do your own assessment and act consequently. Neither this post nor myself is responsible of any of your profit/losses obtained as a result of this information.
Anyone paying attention to crypto knows that BTC has been soaring against alt coins for most of the year. Many alts are near their yearly or all time lows versus BTC.
So when is the right time to get into alts?
LTC vs. BTC analysis
Looking at the daily chart of LTC vs BTC you can see price is currently testing the most recent bottom. Obviously if price holds here then we have a double bottom in that we may be able to trad off of. However, the ultimate lows are still a but further away at .007.
From a risk-reward perspective the trade really isn’t all that bad right here considering price was at .017 just a couple months ago.
Even if price went to the lows to stop you out, it would be only a .0015 loss compared to the possible upside of .009
That’s a 6 to 1 risk-reward ratio!!!
If you have ever read the book Money: Master the Game from Tony Robbins there was one of many themes found when he interviewed top money managers.
They looked for investments that offered 5 to 1 risk-reward scenarios and mainly stuck to that rule.
As for LTC against BTC it could certainly continue lower, especially considering BTC has its halving next year and LTC just completed its.
I’m just saying, from a pure trade perspective there is definitely solid arguments for getting long.
STEEM seen from the temporality of 1W we can observe how the price in the last weeks has been changing the momentum when approaching the second zone of demand in 1W located in the 0.2181, we can clearly see this change in the bodies of candles, we also have bullish divergence from the technical indicator RSI, we see that the relative strength has come up during this structure with double floor potential, in a short time we could see a strong upward movement, we still need to see a bull candle to confirm the intention of the bulls, but the scenario is quite good.
STEEM seen from the temporality of 1D we can observe more closely the current movement of candles, the last two candles have found support in the same horizontal, we can see in the double floor formed by their wicks, if the current candle ends this way we could see a bullish candle that makes us a bottom tweezer in the next session, within this temporality we also have bullish divergence in relation to the technical indicator RSI, the movement of candles has drawn us a bearish inclination while the relative force has come in increase.
In conclusion, after several weeks of strong bearish movement, STEEM seems to show signs of a possible change of trend with, this change may be very strong, the target zone is the supply zone located at 0.3449, we still need to have bullish confirmation, however, the divergences present already begin to warn us of a possible reversal, I recommend to be very attentive to the closing of the candle and confirmation with the next, we could have a +50% gain once we reach the target.
As I always say, you have to be aware of the movement, invalidations can occur, there is no 100% reliable analysis, take your own precautions when trading.
Ripple keeps scoring good points both in the media and in the fan-base with XRP, a leading cryptocurrency in the fintech payments industry.
Whether Ripple is a decentralized or centralized blockchain, who cares as long as they are adding value. Regardless, Ripple and the token, XRP will also have a fanbase that supports their mission. And it’s not just their fanbase that is supporting the token.
Back in January of 2018, Ripple partnered with MoneyGram, one of the world’s largest money transfer companies to pilot XRP in their payment flows. In July, Ripple made some noise by acquiring a stake in MoneyGram.
Well, it appears the pilot went very well because MoneyGram is going all in and recently announced that they are adopting Ripple’s xRapid payment, using XRP as the to fund transfers.
However, the announcement was nothing special as it didn’t move the needle in terms of XRP’s price and price has been sitting between daily supply and demand for quite some time.
Since mid-July, price has been coiling up and is about to break out. A break out to the downside should bring in the buyers around $0.25 and a break out to the upside will be met with sellers at $0.40.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Instead of looking at financial markets or asset classes on an individual basis, intermarket analysis looks at several strongly correlated markets or asset classes, such as stocks, bonds and commodities. This type of analysis expands on simply looking at each individual market or asset in isolation by also looking at other markets or assets that have a strong relationship to the market or asset being considered.
The US economy is still the largest in the world and the US dollar is still the most powerful currency in the world. Over half of all foreign currency reserves in the world are in US dollars. Thus, the asset classes relative strength will be compared to the US Dollar.
Bitcoin
30 Yr Bond
Copper
Euro Dollar
Gold
Oil
Soybeans
S&P 500
Based on the moving averages and the last daily closing price, relative to the moving averages,
the asset classes’ relative strength, relative to the US Dollar are the following:
