Wall Street Buzz: Merrill Lynch Bans Bitcoin For Its Clients

By Darryn Pollock – JAN 04, 2018

“The decision taken by Merrill Lynch prevents roughly 17,000 advisors pitching anything to do with Bitcoin or even executing clients’ request to trade Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC).”

https://cointelegraph.com/news/wall-street-buzz-merrill-lynch-bans-bitcoin-for-its-clients

And more red flags keep popping up!

There are definitely more red flags, a few white flag of companies like Bitconnect being ordered to cease and desist, and a few checkered flags like Ripple the last few weeks that continued to surge. There are so many new companies in the blockchain arena that its a flag fiesta of ever shade, with some bordering on shady.

At any rate it’s an interesting new sector of insanity, prosperity, calamity, and volatility.

Bitcoin is crashing relative to Ethereum:

by @Goldfinger on January 7, 2018

https://ceo.ca/@goldfinger/bitcoin-is-crashing

@Goldfinger – “A bull market as strong as $Bitcoin does not drop to zero in a straight line that’s for sure. It’s quite possible it’s in the early stages of a massive topping process, but that topping process will include making a higher high on waning momentum and a higher percentage of public participation. Will take months to hammer out a massive long term top. And this is not a prediction, it’s simply a potential scenario.”

-> Goldfinger – 6 Jan 2018

Buckle Up: NYSE Files For Leveraged, Inverse Bitcoin ETFs
01/07/2018

“In a move that will certainly not end well for investors, the New York Stock Exchange has asked the SEC to approve five ETFs including 2x leveraged and inverse flavors, linked to Bitcoin futures – which launched in December on the CME amd Cboe, according to a Thursday filing, which is in line with what we said mentioned in August, “we suspect a Bitcoin Futures ETF may actually occur before a Bitcoin ETF.”

The five “derivative of derivative” funds are as follows:

– Direxion Daily Bitcoin 1.25X Bull Shares
– Direxion Daily Bitcoin 1.5X Bull Shares
– Direxion Daily Bitcoin 2X Bull Shares
– Direxion Daily Bitcoin 1X Bear Shares
– Direxion Daily Bitcoin 2X Bear Shares

“The target Bitcoin benchmark will be calculated as the last sale price published by the CME or CBOE on or before 11:00 a.m. EST, and “should not be expected to track the performance of the target bencvhmark for any period longer than one business day.”

“Additionally, while each Fund will seek daily correlation to the target benchmark, it should not be expected to track dollar for dollar the spot price of bitcoin because the Fund will invest in Bitcoin Futures Contracts rather than directly in bitcoin, and the spot price movements of bitcoin may not correspond directly to price movements of the Bitcoin Futures Contracts”

“This means that a 1 percent gain in the price of bitcoin futures would result in a gain of between 1.25% and 2% for the bulish funds, and a 1-2% loss on bear shares, although due to the theta associated with the inherent leverage, the securities will ultimately see their value evaporate over time. ”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-07/buckle-nyse-files-leveraged-inverse-bitcoin-etfs

Re: “It’s quite possible it’s in the early stages of a massive topping process, but that topping process will include making a higher high on waning momentum and a higher percentage of public participation.” —

That is a VERY risky assumption to make. I’d say that the public is quite sufficiently involved based on the “caliber” of people that I see promoting it everywhere. In fact, such a chart also says that the dumb money is already very heavily invested. So, everyone who’s willing to buy such a picture, most likely has.

More importantly, blowoffs aren’t typically followed by a higher high on waning volume. Many tops are, but not blowoff tops. That’s not what we saw with gold in 1980, the nasdaq in 2000, or silver in 2011.

Matthew – Yeah, I tend to agree that a sufficient enough of the public are involved at this point.

As for the top, personally I find the most reliable is the double-top, just like the most reliable bottom is the double-bottom (in general). Many of the turns I look for when trading are when a market comes back and tests a high or low one more time. It may slightly exceed the prior level, but it will always be in the general vicinity. If pricing turns there, then it usually is a significant move that follows.

I’m not saying that is what we’ll see in this case, as the cryptos could keep charging higher and higher as they are in uncharted water. However, if we do see the $20K-$21K level tested again in Bitcoin, and then a retreat, then it could very well mark an intermediate double-top pattern.

My point was just that Goldfinger’s assumption is not supported by history. His wording is quite matter-of-fact when it shouldn’t be.

A double top is also unlikely when dealing with a popping bubble. Every true bubble that I can think of has ended in a blowoff, not a double top – or anything else for that matter.

I was just thinking that the US dollar double topped at 101 and 103, Gold Double-bottomed in December of 2015, Oil double-bottomed, etc… Many individual stocks will do the same, but then again, most aren’t doing a crazed blow-off either.

Maybe in a bubble it will just be a giant blow-off parabola as you mentione due to the extreme nature of the move. I can see you point in an extremely oversold move.

Its hard not to be confronted with cryptos at every turn, or to notice the insane moves in the markets.

Like Ira said on his video posted somewhere below, the cryptocurrencies and general stock market indexes are like vacuum cleaners sucking up the majority of investments at present.

It is definitely quite a phenomenon and will be featured in economic books in the future. How it all shakes out is anyone’s guess…. 🙂

Have not seen it yet………

‘Crypto’ in more than one sense, I guess.

A lot of wealth , is going to be transferred………by failure of these cryptos……..jmo

Never funny, when you can not buy a beer……………..lol

Just ask IRISH……………

“Never funny, when you can not buy a beer……………..lol”

Yes, that is a valid point OOTB. 🙂

GH – good point.

I read the other day (think I posted) that banks in Australia froze all the accounts that were suspected of trading in Bitcoin.
Rickards warned about this kind of thing happening a year ago?

Online is risky, ya never know what a bank broker etc is going to decide to do.
Without notice a person can lose 100%
That doesnt include the hacking risks.

We live in a risky world.

b,

In Australia, they actually did not freeze bank accounts because of Bitcoin transactions. They notified bank account owners that their account will be closed.

Bitcoin investors claim the big four banks are freezing their accounts …
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/bitcoin-investors-accounts-frozen-big-four-banks-2…
7 days ago – Bitcoin investors are claiming Australia’s banks are freezing their accounts and transfers to cryptocurrency exchanges, with a viral tweet slamming the big … name Bitcoin Babe, said she had business accounts closed by 30 banks and posted a picture of a letter from ANZ, saying it was closing her accounts …

Maybe not, but something was happening, internet financial is risky. no fun to deposit a few 100k in bitcoin sales into a bank that freezes or closes the account.
Even if just one bitcoin, a person still has all the hassle of changing banks….that could close.

The Clinton Foundation has done more to help people around the world than the Trump Foundation

PF, how do you breath with your head so deep in the sand?

I trimmed a number of stocks last week, and have a nice pirate’s booty of dry powder ready to deploy if the miners and metals take a breather here. I don’t expect it will be larger or protracted though, so if some of these companies pull back 10-20%, I’ll reload the cannons.

I have been buying back what I sold in December and now am within 1% of the position I started with.

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=IPT.V&p=W&yr=7&mn=9&dy=18&id=p98274515482&a=544288722

Of course I would prefer a pullback to “reset” (narrow the gap between the lines) that daily MACD somewhat:

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=%24SILVER&p=D&yr=0&mn=7&dy=0&id=p64705805312&a=568433206

Oops, wrong place…

I think a subscription to stockcharts is necessary to view the monthly charts.
Looking at the daily chart, I think it will go lower before it goes higher:

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=IPT.V&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=p44226817926&a=539900298

However, the bigger charts and silver tell me that it probably won’t go much lower.

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=%24SILVER&p=W&yr=3&mn=10&dy=0&id=p50375575187&a=501194637

Based on that last chart, I could see Silver just pulling back a bit and then charging higher. It looks like small inverse H&S pattern to me.

What I see is a breakout and a new (weekly!) MACD buy signal. Combined with the power shown on the daily chart, I don’t think it will pull back much, if at all, before going higher.

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=%24SILVER&p=D&yr=0&mn=7&dy=0&id=p64705805312

Of course I would prefer a pullback to “reset” (narrow the gap between the lines) that daily MACD somewhat:

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=%24SILVER&p=D&yr=0&mn=7&dy=0&id=p64705805312&a=568433206

Me too. I sold most of my Primero last month for a tax loss but hope to make it back on MUX.

I tell you, Jerry, I can’t imagine Bill or Hillary spending a second in prison or even being forced to return a penny of their ill gotten gains. I think the corruption runs so deep and broad that it would bring down too many other very powerful people if anything happened to the Clintons. But I hope I am very wrong.

I think the Clintons are going down……just because there are others above them, that do not want the exposure….The Clintons are little people compared to the Rothchilds and the cabal, money changing scum bags that do not want the exposure.

The statute of limitations will run out before Sessions ever gets his ass in gear.

Where the Clinton’s are vulnerable, however, is the use of their Foundation to evade taxation.
The IRS are the folks that NEED to go after the crooked Clintons.

Multinational Fraud scheme……..Gitmo get ready to receive the criminals of the century….

Hard to believe that CNN would publish that…wonder if those reporters still have jobs.

appreciate you for your post on ORTEL…….The guy is spot on…….Wish Owl would get this guy on …..For more exposure……..He needs a Lot of Help exposing the scum bags….

Great answer…………IMO of course…………

As an investor in resource stocks, it takes a lot of work to really understand whether and explorer really has something on their hands. We all to some degree have to learn what we can about geology, or have people with a geological background assist in weeding out the good, the bad, and the ugly. The problem is that many dismiss good projects to soon that get a tarnished name and end up being good mines, or they get behind a project that ends up blowing up. This is a very difficult business, and every company believes that they have the goods.

** So often a mining stock really starts like all other companies; jostling for it’s identity and narrative to sell to institutional and retail investors. Once it captures the minds of newsletter writers and investors, then there is no telling how far it can climb on this narrative before returning to reality when the drill assays come out. It becomes the madness of crowds, and can be extremely profitable if one buys early and sells inton the frenzy.

*** As we saw in 2017 with Arizona Silver, GT Gold, Novo Resources, Garibaldi Resources, or just in the last few weeks with New Nadina Explorations ………. many investors get caught up in a speculative frenzy where realistic expectations are thrown out the window on share price valuation, so that the narrative can be pushed to the fullest. All of those companies spiked up to unimaginable valuations before the freakin’ drill assays even came back. As you can see, all of them made a round-trip when reality set in and they came back to more sane valuations again.

Depending on where investors positioned, either fortunes were made or fortunes where lost (except for the poor fools that had huge gains and watched them all erode back down to where they started…. nothing feels worse than that and why I’d rather trim early and make a profit than watch the profit return to nothing).

Next the companies with solid substantiated results with the drill bit, keep drilling, keep raising money, and keep diluting shareholders to show they really have a nice growing deposit. Different commodities have their own benchmarks, but for example: Once a Gold deposit has a 1-2 million ounce deposit, that is enough for most to start permitting, doing community work on the social contract, doing metallurical studies on their ore, and estimating what the economics will be based on how they will process the ore, what are their onsite energy costs & water costs, where they will process the ore (on-site? or will it have to be hauled to another mill and then processed there for a fee?), what penalties in extra power water mine-site requirements, mining method advantages/disadvantages, or permitting red flags, or metallurgical penalties are there in front of this company?

It is at that stage that a company graduates from being merely and Explorer to being a Developer. Typically the (PEA) Preliminary Economic Assessment is the first major step in a company declaring to the marketplace their report on all of these factors. Really until that is known, it is very difficult to even say whether a deposit is minable at all…… much less, whether it is the size, grade, scalability, and profitability that a Major would even want.

***** BTW – The other problem is that 90% of the PEAs are bull$hit, wishful thinking, and stretch reality on the ideal scenario, on metal price assumptions, and are typically too low on true costs for building the mine, mining method, fuel costs, AISC, and almost always believe they’ll get permitted faster than they do. 🙂

If we take what companies give us on their PEA and then adjust for the overly optimistic scenario and knock it down by 5-20% , then we can still see if a company is really on to something, or if they fall more into the “Optionality” category.

An Optionality play can be for a company that needs metals prices like Silver @$18-$20 or it could be a company needs Silver @ $28-$30. That is a lot different for when each company will become economic, so that should also be considered. Optionality really means “Not economic at current prices” 🙂

Sometimes the optionality stories do allow one to position while a stock is forgotten, hated, or discarded, and then ride it back up as metals prices improve.

The other strategy is to go for companies that are economic at current prices.

Either process works and is profitable. Good trading to the whole KER crew in 2018!

P.S. – Sorry about the spelling errors. I type 160 wpm but often it turns out as gibberish.

Thanks OOTB.

Your are welcome………Ex….

you not your…..

you’re too kind 😮

I think another (P) for Power Requirement should be added, (P) for processing [open pit heap leach or undeground with mill & floatation?]. In addition I think he needs to add a (R/S) for Royalty or Stream, a (D) for Debt levels, a (W) for water needed to mine / or de-watering of the mine, a(M) for Metallurgy, another (M) for Mining Method, and another (M) for Milling [on-site, or is it hauled to another mine to process?], a (T) for Taxation, and a (P/O) is it Profitable at today’s prices or is it an Optionality play for higher prices?

Thank goodness that Louis encapsulated 9 of Doug Casey’s secrets to apply in the interim.

__________________________________________________________

Doug Casey’s 9 Secrets for Successful Speculation

By Louis James, editor, International Speculator – May 15 2017

Secret #1: Contrarianism takes courage.
Secret #2: Success takes discipline.
Secret #3: Analysis over emotion.
Secret #4: Trust your gut.
Secret #5: Assume Bulshytt.
Secret #6: The trend is your friend.
Secret #7: Only speculate with money you can afford to lose.
Secret #8: Stack the odds in your favor.
Secret #9: You can’t kiss all the girls.

https://www.caseyresearch.com/doug-caseys-9-secrets-for-successful-speculation/

https://technical420.com/cannabis-article/aurora-cannabis-be-cornerstone-investor-green-organic-dutchman-and-signs-supplyI missed this. Gets more interesting.

I also forgot DOJA Cannabis Company and Quadron Canntech Corp as 2 other companies.

That CGOC – Cannabis Growth Opportunity Corp still looks interesting for a conglomerate of stocks.

Just like the resources……too many to choose from.😀

The CDN list isnt too bad.

Tuff to dance with all the girls.

I just don’t care for people putting words in my mouth or calling me a fool for some hypothetical action I never discussed doing.

Personally, I’ve been following ANX since the beginning of last year, and invested since last summer, have read countless research pieces by Leni, Newton, and more recently the interviews with the Unknown Geologist. ( I just posted a new one up above). All last year I was posting info for investors to consider on this stock and now someone feels they should school me on the value proposition.

As for whether the sellers gave up, my comments on Friday was that it was making a short term high (so it wasn’t being sold down). Every day that a stock trades, there are 2 sides of the trade “Buyers” and “Sellers”. If a stock is going down swiftly there are more sellers [and that is not what was happening]. If is stock is trending upwards like Anaconda has the last 2 weeks then there are more buyers. If a stock is trend sideways like it did for part of the week last week, there is a balance of buyers and sellers. There is hardly anyone even following this company at this point, so his comment that all the “nervous nellies” had given up on selling, made little sense. All I said is he cracked me up, and he turned it around and got personal and got ugly for no reason.

I never claimed to be an expert or infallible on a price targets, so those comments I made on Friday were just my personal targets for the stock. To have someone come out and get nasty about it, when they were wrong and there wasn’t a selloff but a new short term high are as confusing as they were disappointing.

Then to attack my prior mistakes about Novo, which I was very transparent on was a bit over the top. . I was openly transparent about my miscalculation on Novo Resources and selling too early, so I don’t need some guy that probably wasn’t even invested in NVO to point out that mistake like it is some new revelation.

For the record, I was buying Novo Resources way before most investors even heard of it thanks to Jay Taylor and Bob M. I was invested before they were a sponsor on the KER or before John Kaiser or all the other newsletter writers jumped on the bandwagon, and I made a double on one part and about 160% gain on the other portion. You may scoff at a gain like that but I know a lot of Novo investors that lost money this year by going in at the short-term top. At least I made a profit in it, where most just blow smoke out their rumps and don’t even have a position.

If he didn’t make 100-160% gains in Novo then he shouldn’t say a damn thing about me selling a bit too early. Some investors just bought at the top and lost a great deal of money on the trade, so in comparison I’m sitting pretty.

Whatever, I don’t have any more time to spend on this today, but wishing everyone including DT good luck in their trading this week.