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A major turning point has taken place in investment markets. On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Federal Reserve and Chairman Ben Bernanke made explicit their plans to scale back the asset purchases that make up their current monetary stimulus program widely known as QE3. Now that the word is out, it leads to the most critical question - where do we go from here?The importance to risk assets of the Fed's balance sheet expanding monetary stimulus programs simply cannot be understated. Basically, when the Fed is engaged in daily outright U.S. Treasury purchases, stocks and other related categories have risen almost without interruption and often without fundamental support. But the moment these programs are removed, stocks have shown the propensity to fall quickly back to earth regardless of the economic or market backdrop. It is for this reason alone that investors so anxiously anticipated today's news. Dissecting The Fed So

Tesla (TSLA) has a great many things, including a hot car and visionary leader whom I admire. In my article entitled GM Just Curbed Tesla I argued it also had an overvalued stock. But overvalued or not, might Tesla maintain its momentum and stay that way? If anyone can manage momentum, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk can, and so he may just prove me wrong. The stock has already successfully fought off high profile criticism brought on by a Barron's article. That's unheard of! It's because Musk simply won't rest, literally, as proven by his tweet at 3:42 AM Tuesday: Live pack swap demo on Thurs night at 8pm California time at our design studio in Hawthorne. Seeing is believing. Being disruptive is one thing; being relentless is another. This guy has got me excited, just like it seems all you people who are buying the shares of his

Just in case it wasn't already clear, this week's Federal Reserve policy meeting drove home the point that actions by the central bank are no longer a positive catalyst for gold (GLD). Whatever the Fed said or did was going to be negative for precious metals.If the committee began to "taper" their money printing effort or signal that such a move was coming, the gold price was likely to fall and it did. In the press conference following Wednesday's policy meeting, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke said, "The committee currently anticipates that it will be appropriate to moderate the monthly pace of purchases later this year..." and the gold price fell along with just about every other asset.If, on the other hand, the Fed announced no change in policy and a continuation of their $85 billion bond buying program, the gold price was also likely to fall since

This is what the National Association of Home Builders said earlier this week: June 17, 2013 - Builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes hit a significant milestone in June, surging eight points to a reading of 52 on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. Any reading over 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor. “This is the first time the HMI has been above 50 since April 2006, and surpassing this important benchmark reflects the fact that builders are seeing better market conditions as demand for new homes increases,” said NAHB Chairman Rick Judson, a home builder and developer from Charlotte, N.C. “With the low inventory of existing homes, an increasing number of buyers are gravitating toward new homes.” The eight-point jump in the index was the biggest one-month gain since August and September

More bad news from China here as the Flash PMI falls to a 9 month low (via Markit): Flash China Manufacturing PMI™ at 48.3 (49.2 in May). Nine-month low. Flash China Manufacturing Output Index at 48.8(50.7 in May). Eight-month low. The HSBC Flash China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index™

Taking into account the reaction at E3, Microsoft (MSFT) is backtracking on its "Always on" DRM scheme, with significant implications for GameStop (GME). Put simply, GameStop's business model - which was at risk in the previously announced DRM scheme, is once again viable.This is from Xbox Wire, which is now down due to heavy traffic (emphasis is mine): Last week at E3, the excitement, creativity and future of our industry was on display for a global audience. For us, the future comes in the form of Xbox One, a system designed to be the best place to play games this year and for many years to come. As is our heritage with Xbox, we designed a system that could take full advantage of advances in technology in order to deliver a breakthrough in game play and entertainment. We imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming,

Tesla Motors (TSLA) is expected to demonstrate battery swapping this evening and CEO Elon Musk has said that feature "works with all Tesla Model S cars, past and present"... "It was always there." Battery swapping may have always been built into the Model S, but the infrastructure for doing so was NOT available. Broadly available battery swapping is undeniably a boon for long distance trips, but the practice raises several important questions for both investors and consumers:What will be Tesla's associated build out and maintenance infrastructure costs? The company has said that build-out of solar powered charging stations will average about 300K each, but has been very short on details of maintenance costs. This is by far the most important question for investors. For the build-out of the 100 stations planned in 2013, that meant Capital Expenditure equal to 3% of the $1.08 billion that Tesla raised

China's seven day repo rate hit a record high of 12% according to Bloomberg, the biggest one-day increase since 2006. Meanwhile the overnight repo rate was quoted near 25%. The liquidity squeeze in China first began ahead of the Dragon Boat festival earlier this month. Spikes in interbank rates are common right before holidays. But Diana Choyleva at Lombard Street Research said this is symptomatic of a bigger problem. She said capital flows had "become a more important driver of domestic liquidity conditions in China's managed exchange rate system." In a new note to clients Bank of America's Ting Lu wrote: "There are many factors behind the interbank liquidity squeeze that might be cited, but we believe that the ultimate reason is the central bank’s tough stance as the PBOC can practically provide unlimited liquidity to ease every squeezeif it wishes to." So why isn't the Chinese central bank stepping in? As we previously explained the People's Bank of China seems to be in no mood to support banks' constant demand for liquidity. "It seems that the PBoC and some other regulators could be taking the opportunity of the tight funding conditions to ‘punish’ some small banks which had previously taken advantage of the stable interbank rates to finance their purchase of higher-yield bonds," wrote Lu. This also elicited some worrisome responses from some of our favorite China experts on Twitter. I hope you do realise that by now, China is on crisis watch. — Also sprach Analyst (@theanalyst_hk) June 20, 2013 SHIBOR at 25% basically means there is no functioning interbank market in China - it's like money markets seizing up post-Lehman — Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) June 20, 2013Join the conversation about this story »

Cinedigm Digital Cinema (CIDM) Q4 2013 Earnings Call June 19, 2013 4:30 pm ET Executives Jill Newhouse Calcaterra - Chief Marketing Officer Christopher J. McGurk - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Adam M. Mizel - Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Director Analysts Joel W. Achramowicz - Merriman Capital, Inc., Research Division James Basch Kris Tuttle - Soundview Technology Group, Inc. Presentation Operator Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Cinedigm Digital Cinema Fiscal 2013 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded. Now I'll turn the conference over to your host, Jill Calcaterra, Chief Marketing Officer. Jill Newhouse Calcaterra Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Cinedigm's full year and fourth quarter 2013 earnings conference call. With me today are the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chris McGurk; and Chief Operating Officer and CFO, Adam Mizel. Before I hand the

Resolute Energy Corporation (REN) June 19, 2013 3:00 pm ET Executives Nicholas J. Sutton - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael N. Stefanoudakis - Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary Jeff Roedell Theodore Gazulis - Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Michael David Clouatre - Vice President of Reservoir Engineering Douglas Dietrich James M. Piccone - President and Director William R. Alleman - Vice President of Land Preston Evans Analysts Noel A. Parks - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., Research Division John Freeman - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division Presentation Nicholas J. Sutton We might as well get started. I normally don't need a microphone, but since we're broadcasting this -- we have people on the line. In order to make sure they could hear, we are going to continue to use microphones. So, bear with us if we get too noisy. Just raise your hands