Author: FX_Trdr

As a long-term investment, gold has offered small overall returns with high volatility. But there is still an argument for keeping a sliver of it in a portfolio.

In a week when he tried to focus attention on the struggles of the middle class, President Obama said in an interview that he was worried that years of widening income inequality and the lingering effects of the financial crisis had frayed the country?s social fabric and undermined Americans? belief in opportunity.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said he would join Detroit’s federal bankruptcy case to defend retirees who risk losing public pensions, arguing that the state’s constitution protects their benefits.

By CountingPips.com

10 Year Treasuries: Large trader and speculator positions for 10-year treasury notes in the futures markets decreased last week to a bearish position after being bullish the previous week. 10-year treasury contracts declined to a total net position of -32,312 contracts in the data reported for July 23rd following the previous week’s total of +17,735 net contracts on July 16th. This is the third time out of the last four weeks that net large 10-year spec positions have been on the bearish side.

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions

Article by CountingPips.com – Forex News & Market Analysis

A disconcerting trend lurks beneath the recent round of solid profit forecasts announced by companies ranging from United Technologies Corp to Wendy’s Co : More than three years into the recovery, CEOs are still relying on cost cuts to prop up earnings.

The municipal bond market’s self-regulator said the Detroit emergency manager’s proposed treatment of general obligation bonds in the city’s bankruptcy case risks changing how investors view what has long been considered the safest class of municipal debt. Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s state-appointed manager, has said that general obligation bondholders will remain unsecured creditors in the $18.5 billion bankruptcy filing.

Weak results from several U.S. companies helped tug the stock market down slightly, putting major indexes on course for their first weekly loss this month. Many traders are also looking ahead to a packed schedule of events next week, including a Federal Reserve meeting and the government’s monthly employment report.

If ‘Learnvest’ founder Alexa von Tobel has her way, financial advice will be as widely available and affordable as any other popular consumer product or service.

U.S. technology and financial services firm General Electric is to cut 600 jobs in France, mostly at its finance arm, a union official said, seeking to further shrink the division’s activities in the wake of the banking crisis. GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt is stepping up long-running efforts to shrink finance arm GE Capital, which almost sank the whole company during the 2008 meltdown.

The word that Steve Cohen hates is coming back to bite him. A federal indictment on Thursday of the billionaire hedge fund manager’s firm, SAC Capital Advisors, uses the word “edge” 14 times to describe the way its traders sought information or insight that no one else on Wall Street had.