Market Update - Where's the Financial Collapse?

The Doomsday Prophets for Profit acted like October was the month it would all fall apart.

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How Low Can Gold Prices Go?

Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- In today's "Bart Chart," Bloomberg's Mark Barton takes a look at gold as it pertains to the dollar, rising equities and tame inflation. He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s "Countdown." (Source: Bloomberg)

video found here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/how-low-can-gold-go-POe1825rQBWsv4X6Est9IA.html

SPDR Gold Trust (ETF)
112.27 -2.92 (-2.53%)
Real-time:   12:46PM EDT
NYSEARCA real-time data - Disclaimer
Currency in USD
https://www.google.com/finance?q=GLD&ei=2rxTVPjdJ9LwsQeFzIDoAg

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Average U.S. Gasoline Drops Below $3 for First Time Since 2010
By Lynn Doan and Dan Murtaugh October 31, 2014

For the first time in almost four years, U.S. drivers are paying less than $3 a gallon at the pump.

Retail gasoline prices will average less than $3 a gallon today, Heathrow, Florida-based motoring group AAA said in a statement. That’s down from this year’s peak of $3.696 in April, and the first time the average has dipped below $3 since December 2010.

Sliding prices are seen saving the typical consumer $500 a year and are coming just in time to boost spending during the holiday shopping season, according to analysts including IHS Inc. (IHS:US) The bonus at the pumps represents the biggest benefit to consumers to date from a record boom in domestic oil production that has contributed to a global crude glut and helped bring down international prices.

more here:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-10-31/average-u-dot-s-dot-gasoline-drops-below-3-for-first-time-since-2010

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Dow Jones rallies again with the help of Visa, strong GDP
by  Tom Huddleston, Jr.  @tjhuddle  OCTOBER 30, 2014, 4:44 PM EDT

Stock market index is shy of its record high by just 1%, reversing more than a month of upheavals.

A strong showing by credit card companies and positive economic news helped to push the Dow Jones Industrial Average to within almost 150 points of its all-time high on Thursday.

The Dow Jones jumped 221 points, or 1.3%, to close at 17,196. The index rode a strong earnings report from Visa  V 1.74% , whose shares gained 10.2% and accounted for about 22 points of the Dow’s rally. Another credit card company, Mastercard  MA 1.02% , also had a strong day on the market, rising 9.4% after releasing its own strong quarterly earnings.

Investors were also buoyed by positive news from the Commerce Department, which reported Thursday that gross domestic product grew at a better-than-expected 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter.

The Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 both rose slightly on Thursday – 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively.

The Dow Jones has had a volatile past month since it hit more than 17,350 points, an all-time intraday high, on September 19, which came a little more than two months after the blue-chip index crossed the 17,000-point mark for the first time. However, earlier this month, a series of market-wide sell-offs, including a one-day loss of 335 points for the Dow Jones, erased much of the market’s gains for the year.

more here:
http://fortune.com/2014/10/30/stock-market-thursday-visa-mastercard/

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Jobless claims inch higher, but remain low overall
10/30/14 08:36 AM—UPDATED 10/30/14 05:20 PM
By Steve Benen



It’s disappointing when initial unemployment claims climb two weeks in a row, but given the overall direction of late, it’s hard to feel too discouraged by the new data.

Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits rose slightly in late October, but the level of jobless claims continued to point to an improving labor market in which companies are holding onto the workers they already have while slowly beefing up their staffs. Initial jobless claims climbed by 3,000 to 287,000 in the week ended Oct. 25, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected claims to fall to a seasonally adjusted 281,000.

Claims have been under the key 300,000 benchmark for seven straight weeks for the first time since the recession ended. The average of new claims over the past month, meanwhile, dipped by 250 to 281,000. The four-week average reduces seasonal volatility in the weekly report and is seen as a more accurate barometer of labor-market trends.

more here:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/jobless-claims-inch-higher-remain-low-overall


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Am I saying things in America are as good as the 1950's?
No.

I'm saying it could be way worse.
Setting dates and making stupid predictions will always fail.

I'd LOL so hard if the market took a serious crap right after I posted this.

LOL

One more thing:

Golden Rule | Why Beijing Is Buying
SEPTEMBER 29, 2014
By Alan Greenspan


A sales representative poses behind a 24K gold dragon, December 6, 2011. (Bobby Yip / Courtesy Reuters)

If China were to convert a relatively modest part of its $4 trillion foreign exchange reserves into gold, the country’s currency could take on unexpected strength in today’s international financial system. It would be a gamble, of course, for China to use part of its reserves to buy enough gold bullion to displace the United States from its position as the world’s largest holder of monetary gold. (As of spring 2014, U.S. holdings amounted to $328 billion.) But the penalty for being wrong, in terms of lost interest and the cost of storage, would be modest. For the rest of the world, gold prices would certainly rise, but only during the period of accumulation. They would likely fall back once China reached its goal.

The broader issue -- a return to the gold standard in any form -- is nowhere on anybody’s horizon. It has few supporters in today’s virtually universal embrace of fiat currencies and floating exchange rates. Yet gold has special properties that no other currency, with the possible exception of silver, can claim. For more than two millennia, gold has had virtually unquestioned acceptance as payment. It has never required the credit guarantee of a third party. No questions are raised when gold or direct claims to gold are offered in payment of an obligation; it was the only form of payment, for example, that exporters to Germany would accept as World War II was drawing to a close. Today, the acceptance of fiat money -- currency not backed by an asset of intrinsic value -- rests on the credit guarantee of sovereign nations endowed with effective taxing power, a guarantee that in crisis conditions has not always matched the universal acceptability of gold.

If the dollar or any other fiat currency were universally acceptable at all times, central banks would see no need to hold any gold. The fact that they do indicates that such currencies are not a universal substitute. Of the 30 advanced countries that report to the International Monetary Fund, only four hold no gold as part of their reserve balances. Indeed, at market prices, the gold held by the central banks of developed economies was worth $762 billion as of December 31, 2013, comprising 10.3 percent of their overall reserve balances. (The IMF held an additional $117 billion.) If, in the words of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, gold were a “barbarous relic,” central banks around the world would not have so much of an asset whose rate of return, including storage costs, is negative.

more here:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142114/alan-greenspan/golden-rule

Don't forget about what's coming...
Cashless Soceity