Past gold price bottoms have closely coincided with small speculators moving to a net short position in gold futures. As of Tuesday September 16th the small specs were still holding out with a net long position of more than 4,000 contracts and had actually increased their bullish bets in the previous week: Click to enlarge… Continue Reading

While everyone and their brother appears to have jumped ship on gold and widely read bloggers are churning out mindless posts with alarmist titles, gold has quietly formed a double-bottom during the last 24 hours: Click to enlarge   The longer term technical picture still looks challenging for gold, however, for now there is a clear… Continue Reading

We came across some valuable reading material this afternoon and thought we’d share….. TraderFeed – The extraordinarily weak breadth in the stock market has Dr. Steenbarger moving to the sideline Advisor Perspectives – A Long-Term Look at Inflation MarketWatch – Good riddance, Scotland: We don’t need you Zero Hedge – FED Water-Boy Hilsenrath carries the… Continue Reading

The evidence continues to mount that the current market environment is encouraging risk taking on a record level (cov-lite debt issuance, equity margin debt, overall portfolio leverage levels, etc.) which has led to frothy valuations in multiple asset classes: Click to enlarge Record cov-lite issuance makes the ‘salad days’ of 2007 look tame  Record levels… Continue Reading

Petromanas Energy (PMI.V) has been quietly pulling back for the past couple of months and recently slipped in to an attractive technical buy setup: Click to enlarge After retracing 50% of the entire 2013-2014 rally PMI is retesting previous resistance which should now serve as support. The PMI chart currently offers one of the most asymmetric reward-to-risk… Continue Reading

Exactly two years ago Apple (AAPL) launched the iPhone 5 as its stock soared to all-time highs nearly every day: Click to enlarge Fittingly, it turned out that the September 21st, 2012 iPhone 5 launch date turned out to be a major top for AAPL shares, a level which was not surpassed for 22 months:… Continue Reading

With the ECB shifting to an über-dovish stance, and the possibility of the Fed hiking rates sooner than expected, the US dollar (USD) has suddenly become the most favored currency on the planet: Click to enlarge In fact, the last time the USD was as overbought as it is now was June 2010 when fears of a… Continue Reading

After shocking the majority of participants by declining for the first 8 months of 2014, long rates look to be headed higher once again: Click to enlarge  It looks like the long end of the interest rate curve put in an important low in yields at the end of August – A 3.50% yield on the… Continue Reading

This morning gold has broken key support near $1240 and hopes for a head and shoulders pattern bottom are all but dashed: Click to enlarge The white oval is the ‘last stand’ area of support I highlighted earlier in the week – gold is currently at a level of ‘oversold’ (green ovals) that has historically… Continue Reading

The following chart of the CRB Index sums up what has been a very challenging past few months for commodities: Click to enlarge It is hard to say anything positive about the short term prospects for commodities other than they should put it in a tradable short term bottom at some point in the next few… Continue Reading

Scientifically curated top shelf material we are reading this morning……. WSJ – “Washington Trading Probe Broadens to Hedge Funds” The Reformed Broker – “The simplest yet most important fact” FT – “Apple’s big day didn’t turn me on” MercenaryTrader –  “Be True to Yourself” Advisor Perspectives – “For 90% of Americans: There Has Been No… Continue Reading

High-yield corporate debt has put in an ominous double-top and begun to move lower in aggressive fashion: Click to enlarge And this afternoon equities broke down from a 2-week topping formation in the S&P 500: Notice how realized volatility has nearly doubled from the late-August historic lows, meanwhile, volume has accelerated as price has broken… Continue Reading

The current market environment is certainly unique in many aspects, whether it be the unrelenting uptrend in US equities or the extremely low volatility across asset classes, this market is clearly a different animal than anything investors have seen before. Some of the recent action in West Texas Intermediate crude oil is yet another example of this… Continue Reading

Gold is under heavy pressure again this morning and a ‘last stand’ for gold bulls is fast approaching: Click to enlarge The gold futures chart shows a bearish engulfing candlestick forming today after last week’s breakdown from the large symmetrical triangle The $1240 level (support from early June) is now the last line of defense before… Continue Reading

Every so often a favorite blogger of ours, War Tard, writes a tour de force post that becomes an absolute must read for anyone who would like to be informed about geopolitics. He just dropped another ‘bomb’ regarding the Sunni Islamic terror group known as ISIS – A few choice excerpts: “The pesky thing about the… Continue Reading