Used car payments hit record $400 per month as prices top $20,000

Americans are spending more than ever for used cars.

The average price of a used vehicle hit an all-time high for the third quarter of 2018, according to car-buying advice site Edmunds.

At $20,084, the average price was up 3.5 percent from the same period a year earlier and up nearly 19 percent from five years earlier.

And rising interest rates are driving costs even higher. 

The average American used-car buyer is now paying a record high of $400 per month — with loans averaging 66.9 months, according to Edmunds. That's the longest ever.

"We’re still seeing prices ratchet up," said Ivan Drury, Edmunds’ senior manager of industry analysis. "It’s definitely changing the landscape of the used-vehicle market."

A shift in preferences toward larger vehicles — namely, SUVs and pickups — is one reason why average prices are moving higher. Passenger cars, which are falling out of favor, are typically sold for lower prices.

A Crack in the Dike?

Tuesday’s announcement by the Department of Justice of a guilty plea by a former trader of JPMorgan for systemic “spoofing” and price manipulation of gold, silver, platinum and palladium traded on the COMEX and NYMEX futures exchanges (owned by the CME Group) sure seemed like a very big deal to me for a number of reasons. The infractions occurred from 2009 to 2015 and the trader admitted to engaging in a conspiracy to commit market manipulation on hundreds of occasions, with the knowledge and consent of his immediate supervisors. Please take the time to read this, as it is remarkably plainspoken.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-precious-metals-trader-pleads-guilty-commodities-fraud-and-spoofing-conspiracy

First, let me get some personal feelings out of the way. I’ve received a number of comments to the effect of how this vindicates my long held belief that JPMorgan is the silver (and gold) crook of crooks. The truth is that I don’t consider it vindication (yet), but I will confess to a feeling of relief upon reading the complaint, as I believe it greatly reduces the chances of JPMorgan suing me for openly calling them the crooks that they are. To be sure, my fear of being sued was never really a personal fear, but how it might affect my wife and family. Correctly or incorrectly, I feel a great burden has been lifted.

Why Are so Few Americans Able to Get Ahead?

Our entire economy is characterized by cartel rentier skims, central-bank goosed asset bubbles and stagnating earned income for the bottom 90%.

Despite the rah-rah about the "ownership society" and the best economy ever, the sobering reality is very few Americans are able to get ahead, i.e. build real financial security via meaningful, secure assets which can be passed on to their children.

As I've often discussed here, only the top 10% of American households are getting ahead in both income and wealth, and most of the gains of these 12 million households are concentrated in the top 1% (1.2 million households). (see wealth chart below).

Why are so few Americans able to get ahead? there are three core reasons:

1. Earnings (wages and salaries) have not kept up with the rising cost of living.

Former JP Morgan trader pleads guilty to manipulating US metals markets for years

An ex-J.P. Morgan Chase trader has admitted to manipulating the U.S. markets of an array of precious metals for about seven years -- and he has implicated his supervisors at the bank. 

John Edmonds, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of commodities fraud and one count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, price manipulation and spoofing, according to a Tuesday release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Edmonds spent 13 years at New York-based J.P. Morgan until leaving last year, according to his LinkedIn account.

As part of his plea, Edmonds said that from 2009 through 2015 he conspired with other J.P. Morgan traders to manipulate the prices of gold, silver, platinum and palladium futures contracts on exchanges run by the CME Group. He and others routinely placed orders that were quickly cancelled before the trades were executed, a price-distorting practice known as spoofing.

12 Legit Work-At-Home Jobs Hiring Now for November 2018

Once again Warren Buffett has given us a major warning that everything is expensive

Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, just announced a blockbuster quarter, earning nearly $7 billion.

And Buffett’s still sitting on over $100 billion of cash. That means he’s got enough money to buy almost any company he wants, anywhere in the world.

But the only move Buffett made in the last quarter was buying $928 million of Berkshire Hathaway stock.

Some people might say this is a sign that Buffett thinks Berkshire’s stock is incredibly undervalued.

To be fair, nobody knows Berkshire better than Buffett. And shares may present a good value at this level – an all-time high price.

But it’s clear to me that Buffett simply can’t find anything else worth buying.

Square’s Bitcoin Revenue Increases by $6 Million in Q3, Profits Top $500,000

U.S. financial services company Square revealed it generated $43 million in Bitcoin (BTC) revenue for Q3 2018 in its most recent shareholder letter Nov. 8.

Presenting a digest of its total earnings and financial activities, Square, which introduced Bitcoin support in its Square Cash payment app earlier this year, saw cryptocurrency revenue grow by a total of $6 million compared to Q2.

“Total net revenue was $882 million in the third quarter of 2018, up 51% year over year. This includes $43 million of bitcoin revenue,” the letter confirms, stating:

“Excluding bitcoin revenue, total net revenue was $839 million, up 43% year over year.”

The statistics come at a stirring time for Square, which this week also saw its market cap surpassthat of Twitter, the stalwart social media platform which shares Jack Dorsey as CEO.

Bitcoin remains a niche for the company meanwhile, with revenues resulting in only slender profits of around $500,000 after taking into account Bitcoin purchasing costs.

A post-election roundup

The midterm elections are now behind us. I break down the greatest risk to the markets now that we have a split in power.

Steve Koomar, publisher and editor of Vigilante Investor, joins us once again to talk about a huge risk China is facing that’s much bigger than tariffs.

Steve also breaks down the 5G revolution—including who he thinks the biggest winners will be in this incredible secular growth trend.

I’m finding tons of new ideas in today’s market… cheap companies with incredible growth potential. In today’s educational segment [50:05] I share a few of my favorites…

Housing Least Affordable in a Decade

It takes 23.6% of median income to make the monthly payment on the average-priced home.

In it's latest report, the Black Knight Mortgage Monitor confuses affordability with payment stress and fails to make an apples-to-apples comparison when determining homes are "more affordable" today than in the period 1995-2003.

Nonetheless, the report is interesting for what it does show. I am passing on a number of suggestion to them as to how to make the report better.

Mortgage Monitor Bullet Points

• It now takes 23.6% of median income to make the monthly payment on the average-priced home, making housing the least affordable it’s been in nearly a decade.

• The monthly principal and interest payment needed to purchase the average-priced home has seen a $190 per month increase since the beginning of 2018, an 18% jump.

Lower Your Taxes by Thinking Rich

A couple weeks ago, New York Times reported that Jared Kushner “paid little or no income tax from 2009 to 2016.”

Gasp!

President Trump’s son-in-law and his family company have spent billions of dollars buying real estate. His net worth is reported to be almost $324 million. But yet, they have paid almost no federal income taxes.

“In 2015, for example, Mr. Kushner took home $1.7 million in salary and investment gains. But those earnings were swamped by $8.3 million of losses, largely because of “significant depreciation” that Mr. Kushner and his company took on their real estate, according to the documents reviewed by The Times.

Last year, the White House championed revisions of the nation’s tax law that expanded many of the benefits enjoyed by real estate investor, allowing them to take even larger deductions.

Fire All Accountants, Making Money Is No Longer Necessary | McAlvany Commentary

The State of the American Debt Slaves, Q3 2018

Consumers are being lackadaisical again with their plastic.

Consumer debt – or euphemistically, consumer “credit” – jumped 4.9% in the third quarter compared to the third quarter last year, or by $182 billion, to almost, but no cigar, $4 trillion, or more precisely $3.93 trillion (not seasonally adjusted), according to the Federal Reserve this afternoon. As befits the stalwart American consumers, it was the highest ever.

Consumer debt includes credit-card debt, auto loans, and student loans, but does not include mortgage-related debt:

The nearly $4 trillion in consumer debt is up 49% from the prior peak at the cusp of the Financial Crisis in Q2 2008 (not adjusted for inflation). Over the same period, nominal GDP (not adjusted for inflation) is up 39% — thus continuing the time-honored trend of debt rising faster than nominal GDP.

Is Bitcoin Gearing Up for a Year-End Rally?

By Jeff Clark, editor, Delta Report

The holiday season was spectacular for bitcoin last year.

The oldest and largest cryptocurrency was trading for about $6,000 per coin on Halloween 2017. By the time we got to Christmas, bitcoin was above $19,000 per coin.

Of course, we all know what happened next.

It’s the same thing that always happens when an asset price goes parabolic to the upside.

Bitcoin crashed. It gave back all of the gains of the parabolic rally phase. And for the past few months, bitcoin has been stuck in a relatively tight trading range between $6,300 and $6,600 per coin.

But it looks to me like bitcoin is gearing up for another year-end rally.

Take a look at the chart below, which tracks the price of bitcoin…

ECONOMIC DANGER ZONE: There’s No Going Back For America - Jerry Robinson Interview

Don't Be a Victim of 'China-Phobia'

"My American pride took a real hit on this trip," a friend told me on our most recent trip to China.

"What was it that got you?" I asked him. It was his first time visiting the country.

"It wasn't one thing. It was... everything," he said.

"We are in what is supposed to be a third-world, communist country," he explained. "So my expectations were low. But Beijing and Shanghai are like stepping into the future. And I just did not expect that, coming from America."

I think his sentiments get right to the heart of the matter...

Americans feel that China is the first real threat in decades to our belief in American dominance.

Big Short’s Eisman Is Shorting U.K. Banks on Brexit

Big Short’s Eisman Is Shorting U.K. Banks on Brexit

– Eisman says U.K. is one of the biggest risks globally
– He is betting against two UK banks in the lead up to Brexit
– Eisman may short 50 other UK firms if “Trotskyite” Corbyn becomes UK PM
– Eisman is famous for betting against the US housing market ahead of the 2008 subprime-mortgage crisis

The hedge-fund manager famous for betting against the US housing market ahead of the 2008 crash is shorting a pair of British bank stocks in anticipation that the UK falls out of the European Union without securing a Brexit deal.

“I’m shorting two stocks in the UK,” he told a conference in Dubai over the weekend, as reported by Bloomberg. He wouldn’t name the companies.

He reportedly told the conference that while he expects the UK to secure a deal with Brussels, he then expects that deal to be rejected in the UK parliament, ultimately forcing Britain out of the bloc without a deal.

Bloomberg notes that Metro Bank, and CYBG, the parent company of Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank, are the two most shorted UK financial stocks.

Some 6.6% of Metro Bank’s stock is currently being shorted, data from Castellain Capital’s Short Interest Tracker showed on Monday morning.

Eisman said that while he is currently shorting just two UK stocks, that number could rise as high as 50 if Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn were to become prime minister, because he believes Corbyn’s policies would be detrimental to the UK economy.

Make $25/ Hr Watching Sports - Real Online Job Hiring Now for November 2018

What you need to know about 5G technology

5G isn’t here yet… But it’s going to be one of the world’s biggest growth trends over the next couple years.

5G is the fifth and next generation of cellular mobile technology, replacing current 4G systems. This new technology promises to put an end to dropped calls and slow downloading speeds, as well as provide a huge tailwind to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Today I explain how the infrastructure will be built out for this incredible technology… And share the companies with exposure to this monster trend that could make you money.

If you have cash you can’t afford to lose, I explain the options for earning a good yield in a low interest rate environment. But remember, the higher the yield, the more risk you must take on.

I’ll also talk more about our upcoming security token offering (STO) and the benefits it offers.

If you’re among the first to this market—the next evolution of cryptocurrencies—it can lead to life-changing returns…

These stocks soared during the tech bust and likely will again today

The year was 1999. I was working for a small newsletter company with its Asian research offices based in Manila, Philippines.

The dotcom boom was in full swing. And, just like today, companies with no profits, burning through hundreds of millions of dollars of investors’ capital in a race to build scale and grab market share or attract “eyeballs,” were the market darlings of the day.

I didn’t get it.

Moreover, having just seen how ugly things can get when a market mania goes bust – after witnessing the Korean economic collapse in 1997-1998 first-hand, while working in Seoul, I was extremely cautious.

I wasn’t about to go chasing after the next hot concept stock, in the hope of selling for a profit to a “greater fool.” But that was about the only trading strategy still working at that time… a bit like now.

America’s Next Health Craze Is Here to Stay… And You Can Profit

“Do you have anything for dogs?”

“Sure,” the store attendant said. He then pointed out a few products in a glass case.

The woman grabbed one of them, and then walked to the register to pay.

After overhearing this, I also became interested in what was in this glass case. Because it wasn’t filled with typical pet-care products…

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Big Surprise Coming for the White House

Will this go down in history as THE moment that changed America – forever?

At first, I didn’t think so. And you won’t either, I bet.

But your mind will change in 60 seconds… once you see the stunning proof this millionaire and former hedge fund manager is releasing today.

• It was filled with CBD (cannabidiol) products…

CBD is a compound in cannabis.

It doesn’t get people high like THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). But it does offer many health benefits.

People take it to treat anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain… you name it. And yes, some people even give CBD to their pets.

Of course, you’d already know this if you’ve been reading the Dispatch. Back in May, I predicted that CBD would become the next big health craze.