By: Julian D. W. Phillips, Gold/Silver Forecaster - Global Watch - 11 February, 2011
Over the last eight years or so we have seen the Technical Analysis approach to the gold price give incorrect signals, when seen in isolation. Many times the technical picture pointed down on the gold price in the face of a strong fundamental picture. We know that this has wrong-footed many gold investors who found themselves waiting for a fall only to see it consolidate then rise. Full Story
By: Terry Coxon, The Casey Report - 11 February, 2011
In the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve responded to the Lehman bankruptcy by igniting a rapid expansion in the U.S. money supply. It did so because, by its lights, the immediate and obvious menace to the economy was a deflationary collapse, with one giant bankruptcy breeding another. And it went about the task without compromise; the monetary base more than doubled in less than a year, and the public's M1 money supply (checkable deposits plus hand-to-hand currency) jumped by 20%. Full Story
By: Doug Casey, The Casey Report - 11 February, 2011
Here at Casey Research, our view of the Great Depression of the 1930s is a little different from that of most people. In our eyes, Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t a hero, he was a villain. Nearly everything he did served to extend and deepen the economic downturn. Full Story
Inflation vs. market fluctuations is always a hot topic in precious metal markets. Inflation is good for gold, which has a long history of acting as a hedge against it. With rising inflation it is likely that there will be a corresponding rise in the price of precious metals; that brings us to the question, how do you value gold? Full Story
How much gold is too much gold if you're a fixed-income investor...? GOLD DOESN'T pay any income, of course. Which is why retirees and pensioners should hate it. But since gold cannot go bust – and because its tight supply typically finds strong demand when cash loses value to inflation in the cost-of-living – gold in fact makes the perfect insurance for fixed-income investments like corporate or government bonds. At least, that's what €39 million gold investor Stichting Pensioenfonds Vereenigde Glasfabrieken says. Full Story
By: Adam Hamilton, Zeal Intelligence - 11 February, 2011
Red-hot copper hit another new all-time high this week, extending its mighty upleg to a 66.6% gain since June! As always after any strong run, investors and speculators are pretty excited about this essential base metal these days. But this incredible bullishness, along with overbought technicals, actually suggests copper is on the verge of a major correction today. Full Story
A new boom has been born. It has everything we look for in an emerging trend. Its benefits significantly outweigh its costs to users. It’s already proven. It works and the technology has already established a beachhead in some rapidly recovering market. Full Story
Despite the recent Happy Talk from the Main Stream Media and relatively quiescent and modestly uptrending Equities Markets, it is Macro-Trends which ultimately determine the fate of the Markets and Investor’s Profits and Losses. Full Story
Certain characteristics of crumbling empires are historically recurring, and pattern recognition practitioners are thus informed and so forewarned. Their discourse is labeled contrarian, hysterical, strident or radical, depending on the source of criticism, who seldom survive the subsequent reality to be told “I told you so”. Thats not the point anyway. Full Story
The essence of this Goldsmiths is that the world is setting on perhaps 100 trillions of dollars or more in US loan guarantees which could easily go down the tubes in a big dollar melt down. When will this happen? Maybe this year; or perhaps at the latest next year. Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru - 11 February, 2011
Proving once again that investing in fixed-yield bonds when the foul, filthy Federal Reserve is creating so much money (so that their governments can deficit-spend it!) is a stupid, stupid, stupid idea because inflation will result, Agora Financial’s 5-Minute Forecast newsletter reports that “Already since October, the rate on the 10-year has jumped from 2.4% to 3.6% – a 50% increase.” Yikes! Full Story
Misunderstandings can be quite expensive for investors, and this article will examine two common but mistaken beliefs about short-term government debt and inflation. Full Story
By: Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital - 10 February, 2011
Based on his recent public comments, Fed Chairman Bernanke seems determined to give the U.S. dollar the reputation of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak: an unwanted relic of the past that everyone agrees must go, but stubbornly clings to a privileged position. The dollar is currently the world's ruling currency, but, as with Mubarak, I believe that growing public discontent will spur regime change quicker than most pundits expect. Full Story
By: Ira Epstein, The Linn Group - 10 February, 2011
China surprised the financial markets by raising interest rates on Tuesday. They raised the exchange rate for the Yuan by a fraction today. The rate hike had long been anticipated, but having it occur on the Lunar Holiday seemed to have surprised the market. The net result was that the Dollar broke off this news while the Eurocurrency rallied. Full Story
By: Terry Coxon, The Casey Report - 10 February, 2011
It was Otto von Bismarck who explained that “politics is the art of the possible.” We can thank him for that much, but he didn’t tell the whole story. I’ll give you the rest of it. Politics is the art of the possible fictions you can get away with. Full Story
By: The Gold Report and Taylor MacDonald - 10 February, 2011
A lot of short-term peaks and troughs can make things messy in the resource space, and the associated volatility can whipsaw people out of investments. "Still," says Pathfinder Asset Management Limited's Associate Portfolio Manager Taylor MacDonald, "the long-term picture itself is very much intact." Full Story
It is the week of February 07, 2011 and the Dow rests above 12,000 for the first time in three years. The markets have rebounded impressively since March of 2009, when the financial markets struck their lowest lows before a quick surge and near double to today. Full Story
WHAT WOULD the world look like if, as a handful of economists, investors and politicians hope, gold really was money again? In a word, cheap...ish. Cheaper, at least, than much of it was a decade ago. Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru - 10 February, 2011
I am as skeptical as the next guy about technical analysis, maybe more so, so I was kind of intrigued when Robert McHugh of Main Line Investors wrote an essay titled “Time Analysis of the Coming Market Top.” Full Story
By: Rick Ackerman, Rick's Picks - 10 February, 2011
With The ‘Nank in the hot seat on Capitol Hill Wednesday, our good friend Doug – “the savviest financial advisor we know” – called to ask whether we were seeing any signs of a paradigm shift on our charts. That would be logical, he said, since the Fed Chairman appeared to be preparing his Congressional inquisitors and the news media for nothing less than The End of Quantitative Easing. Full Story
With the advent, then the continuation of the Quantitative Easing exercise in hyper-inflation and capital destruction, the US Federal Reserve has perhaps taken its deeply damaged reputation as a central banker and decimated it into shreds. They have lost the respect of the world, more so outside the nation's borders than inside. The financial sector and politicians seem unable to stop showing deep reverence for the post, even licking the Chairman's boots whenever he appears before the USCongress. Recent hints of contempt in WashingtonDC are encouraging. He has not made a single correct forecast on major items. The USFed in short has lost control. Full Story
The global financial cataclysm is mushrooming with every stroke of the keyboard at a central bank, with the issuance of new debt to cover old debt, and with the illusion of creating money out of thin air. It is all debt, nothing else, with no final settlement…. EVER. You exchange the money you work for and save and buy a government bond; they print the money to pay you back and PRETEND you have been paid. Full Story
Since I’m not a REE expert why am I writing about them? The answer has to do with silver. Silver shares many characteristics with the rare earth elements and there is a lot to learn from them in our analysis of silver. In fact, the purpose of this article is to make the case that silver is the rarest of all the rare earth elements. Full Story
While there is no doubt Gold is being manipulated, or held lower every chance possible, the fact is also true that large sovereign buyers and fund buyers are waiting in the wings to scoop up cheaper Gold. More recently they have had less patience and have not waited for large pullbacks, rather they’ve stepped back in at relatively minor support areas in an attempt to front run the growing list of others who are looking to do the same. Full Story
Federal Reserve members are openly taking credit for sparking increases in individual asset prices (i.e. stocks) while at the same time contending their policies are not to blame for the broad advance in commodity prices. Given that commodity prices have more closely correlated the increase in equities than the broader inflation rate, Lockhart-logic dictates that equities and commodities are a part of the same asset price ‘category’. In this category sits anything that can be purchased with margin, leverage, or cheap money, and anything that could conceivably be regarded as ‘alternative’ to traditional savings. In the asset price category also rests an inflationary monster that has not been seen in decades… Full Story
By: Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster - 9 February, 2011
The administration and those who control it, the House and Senate, want us to believe that debt can be paid out of revenues now and forever. As inflation and perhaps hyperinflation set in we could easily see 10% interest rates. If that happened debt service would consume more than 40% of tax revenues. The projection that tax receipts over the next four years would grow by 1/3rd is ludicrous. That is more than 12% a year. Further increased taxation would send more companies and jobs offshore. The bottom line is that further will impede GDP growth and further stagnate the economy. Full Story
By: Jeff Berwick, The Dollar Vigilante - 9 February, 2011
Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke and other government officials always talk about the importance of “confidence” to the economy. But that is because they are confidence men (aka. conmen) playing a confidence game (congame). Full Story
We are very bullish for the long-term for the resource sector, i.e., gold, silver and the resource shares. However, we need to live life and the markets in real time and the question is where are we now and what should investors do, if anything? Full Story
The purpose of this paper is to draw particular attention to the recent disparity in crude oil prices – namely the difference between two benchmarks - West Texas Intermediate [WTI] and Brent [North Sea] Crude. Historically the price of WTI trades at a premium to lesser quality Brent North Sea Crude. This paper lays out the case that the extreme, existing, observable price discrepancies is likely the result of engineered and arbitrary market manipulations – to be discussed below. Such arbitrary price manipulations in the oil markets impact negatively on the oil exporting economies and show favor to oil importing economies. Full Story
By: Julian D. W. Phillips, Gold/Silver Forecaster - Global Watch - 8 February, 2011
As we write, the gold price is at $1,364 having bounced off support at $1,324. It is now consolidating, so we have to ask is it about to return to an upward movement longer-term? If it is just consolidating before another strong drop we need to know because it could mean that the long-term upward trend will be broken. For sure the gold market has moved into one of those high risk areas where one expects a sudden and a strong mover, either way. But if it is going to rise, then we are at the point where we should be entering or re-entering the market. Full Story
Today, almost 1,000 years after paper money first appeared and 350 years after China banned its use, China’s is again issuing excessive amounts of paper money; and, once again, paper money’s initial prosperity is about to give way to inflation and economic chaos in the celestial kingdom. Full Story
Summing up, the outlook is bullish short-term for the white metal as is the case for gold. Higher prices in the short-term appear quite probable, however if a lot of your long-term capital is currently invested in silver, we suggest paying close attention to what happens in the main stock indices in the following days. Full Story
By: David Galland, The Casey Report - 8 February, 2011
In describing the current situation in these United States, and in many of the world’s other superpowers, we here at Casey Research have often used the word “intractable”… as in, “impossible to resolve.” While that may not be technically accurate – because there is no problem related to economics that can’t be solved if one is willing to swallow sufficiently strong medicine – it is a correct assessment, given the overwhelming role that politics now play in the economy. Full Story
With stocks and bonds in a bear market, your friendly neighborhood investment professional and his ilk will have nowhere to turn but to Precious Metals and hard assets. You see, until what will be a few months in the future, there were other options (aside from Precious Metals). Treasuries performed well from 2000-2003 and from 2007-2008. Stocks performed well from 2003-2007 and from 2009-2010. This is why even 11 years into a bull market, the global allocation to Gold is only 1%. Full Story
When you are involved in a roaring bull market, a great number of imaginary views come into existence around you. Great care must be taken so you don’t become enveloped in these imaginary dreams, and then find yourself destroyed by nightmares of reality. For example, Gold ground sideways from the early 1990s to the early 2000s in the $300-400 area generally. A long ten year basing period. It is also the period when the banksters accumulated (and traded) the great yellow metal. Real and new wealth is built by the richest people, by accumulating during such periods of time and value pricing. When viewed from “outside the accumulation box”, the reality of this discomfort and even pain is lost on smaller investors. Full Story
2010 was an exciting year for currencies. The dollar, euro, the yen, and the yuan all went under the spotlight. Except for the yuan, each experienced drastic swings wrought about by internal or external factors. But overall, these events underwhelmed confidence in paper money. The main reason is because of the sovereign debt crisis that swept the world. Full Story
There is really just one question about China, the Western mindset’s “enigma wrapped in mystery”. How could the Chinese have made the colossal mistake of investing their hard-earned savings in the debt of the U.S. government — to the tune of $ 1 trillion, the largest sum one country has ever loaned another in all history. (There is only one other puzzle greater than this: How could the U.S. government in good faith allow its debt to accumulate in Chinese hands? But we leave that question for another occasion to discuss.) U.S. debt is easy to buy but hard to get rid of. The harder, the larger are the sums involved. Full Story
By: Steve Saville, The Speculative Investor - 8 February, 2011
While an economy-wide inflation-fueled investment bubble is in full swing, policy-makers will look smart. At least, they will look smart to the economically illiterate. But when the bubble bursts, the policy-makers that looked ingenious will quickly begin to look decidedly less so. In fact, if they try to short-circuit the corrective process that must follow the bursting of an inflation-fueled bubble -- by ramping up government spending, for example -- there's a very good chance that they will end up being widely perceived as incompetents. Full Story
What motivates people to lie? Is lying instinctive, present at birth, part of human genetic makeup, or is it learned behavior, an acquired skill necessary for survival. Certainly deceit is a vital part of survival. We know from nature, without cunning and deceit, the stalking lion goes hungry; the octopus changes its color, blending into the background to evade predators. This natural behavior allows the species to live for another day; life, and the species, goes on. Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru - 8 February, 2011
James Cook of InvestmentRarities.com reminds us, in his “Market Update” newsletter, that the silver inventory held above ground totals 1.4 billion ounces, and that annual industrial use of silver is 900 million ounces, so that a year and half’s worth of silver exists, “although a third of it is destined for industrial consumption,” which has been increasing its use of silver by 18% in 2010. Full Story
By: Rick Ackerman, Rick's Picks - 8 February, 2011
Sometimes, we forget that trading can be more humbling, even, than golf. Not yesterday, though. Who could have imagined we’d predict the Dow’s intraday high within a point, only to blow the short trade we’d advised from that high? That’s what happened, mainly because, when the trade started to go our way, we lowered the stop-loss by a hair to all but eliminate the theoretical possibility of even a small loss. Full Story
Coming from a professional background that included time with a Wall Street broker dealer, merchant banker, and M&A firm, I have seen several investment manias first hand. If this great gold bull market were to wither away now, without the traditional blow-off top characterized by a flood of new participants feverishly bidding up the spot price, it would be a historic anomaly. More likely, analysis seems to indicate that only a minimal number of investors have benefited from the rise in gold and silver so far. Further, this strongly suggests that the bullish trend for precious metals remains in place, and there is still room for substantial appreciation over the long term. Full Story
By: The Gold Report and Lawrence Roulston - 7 February, 2011
The value of gold may be plummeting but many gold stocks are clocking double-digit gains, according to Lawrence Roulston, the editor of the Resource Opportunities newsletter and an expert on mining investments. "It's definitely a buying opportunity. The fundamentals are strong, and we're seeing weaknesses in the prices on a short-term basis here," he says. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Roulston explains why he loves the prospect generator model and why now is the perfect time to snub bullion and cozy up to mining equities. Full Story
Silver promises to become the next big buzzword among investors in 2011 and beyond, according to one of the investment industry’s most prescient and successful experts on precious metals. Eric Sprott is the founder of the Toronto-based investment firm, Sprott Asset Management LP. His renowned hedge fund, Sprott Hedge Fund LP, is heavily weighted in precious metals and has generated an estimated 23% annualized return over the past decade. Other similarly oriented funds under his stewardship have also been stellar performers in recent years. Full Story
Apparent disparities and idiosyncrasies between Western economies and China (at center of the emerging market model) continue to grow more profound, which will eventually end badly by popping the larger global credit bubble for good this time. This is of course not to say that our ambitious and greedy bankers and their crony politicians will disappear overnight, however if the serial bubbles in stocks, bonds, and anything that moves are popped, they will definitely have a great deal less currency to work with moving forward. Full Story
It has been my contention all along that the Fed would print until something breaks. Once that break occurs we will enter the next leg down in the secular bear market. This time I don't expect it to be the credit markets, although we will almost certainly have trouble in the municipal and state bond markets. Some may even default. I actually think the greater risk is from massive layoffs by state and local governments in an effort to cut expenses and avoid default. When that begins we will see unemployment levels start to spike again. Full Story
Happy New Year 4708! According to the Chinese calendar it’s the Year of the Rabbit. The leading Asian brokerage firm CLSA reports the Rabbit will “wrest the reins from the decidedly unpleasant and erratic Tiger that’s been tossing and turning the markets over the past 12 months.” We all could appreciate a respite from extreme volatility. Full Story
Since September 2010 silver has broken its golden shackles. The algorithmic trading that kept the price of silver subdued for seven years has been completely annihilated. On Friday silver closed in complete backwardation on the Comex. Spot silver closed at $29.075/oz while FEB 2011 closed at $29.064/oz and DEC 2015 closed at $29.026/oz. I believe this is the first time in history that this has happened. Silver traded in backwardation between the spot price and futures contract up to one year out during the blatantly manipulative precious metals bashing of January, but now the entire futures structure is in backwardation. This is a sure sign there are shortages of silver because it means that buyers will pay a premium for silver delivered sooner rather than later. Full Story
The world of warrants is the undiscovered constellation in the universe of securities. Long term (LT) warrants shone brightly in 2009 – up 242% in U. S. dollar terms - and were up a further 91% in U.S. dollar terms in 2010. That’s correct: 242% in 2009 followed up with a further 91% in 2010! The warrant world consists of only 135 stars (i.e. constituents) of which only 32 are associated with 29 commodity-related stocks that have sufficient brightness (i.e. 24+ months duration) to warrant (the pun is intended!) the attention of earthly investors. Full Story
What I currently see in gold is a cocksure arrogance creeping in among the usual trend follower suspects that the monetary metal has made an important top. One might assume this is due to the gold bear not having been on board the secular run (the bull market has thrived on these people all the way up), or possibly due to his having been burned badly, compliments of the actions of Mr. Volcker, in 1980. Full Story
Gold bottomed and looks to be moving higher BUT the volume is just not there to be encouraging. The next week or so will tell us if it is going towards higher levels or if the downside will continue. Full Story
By: Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster - 6 February, 2011
The Euro zone participants who have financial problems, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Belgium, Spain and Italy are expected to deflate via austerity and at the same time be more competitive. This is supposed to be accomplished quickly so that overhanging debt can be extinguished. This, of course, is an impossible task. You have the IMF demanding austerity and EU members demanding growth. Full Story
By: John Mauldin, Millennium Wave Advisors - 6 February, 2011
Tonight (Thursday) I am flying to Thailand and will “lose” my normal Friday writing day, so I am going to give you a preview of my new book, Endgame, out and in the bookstores next month. This is the beginning of chapter four, and it stands alone quite nicely. It will print out a little longer than normal, as there are a lot of graphs. My co-author Jonathan Tepper and I deal with why there will be slower growth, more volatility, and more frequent recessions in our future. Full Story
By: Michael Pento, Senior Economist at Euro Pacific Capital - 6 February, 2011
In a heated debate on the February 1st episode of CNBC's "The Kudlow Report", financial commentator Donald Luskin offered his "textbook" definition of inflation as "an overall rise in the general price level." I countered with the "dictionary" definition. My 1988 edition of Webster's Dictionary defines inflation as follows: "An increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods, resulting in a substantial and continuing rise in the general price level." [Emphasis added.] These differences are not academic and go a long way toward explaining why economists argue so vociferously. Full Story
Traders are always itching to sell and cash in on the latest market cycle. But it is seldom that easy to be 100 per cent right, except with a time machine. The book thought to be the memoires of that great trader Jesse Livermore, ‘Reminiscences of a Stock Operator’, written in 1923 has some timeless advice. Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru - 6 February, 2011
Art Arbutine of Belleaircoins.com has a nice pamphlet titled “Everything you wanted to know about buying and selling precious metals, and then some!!!!!” I have to admit that I was certainly intrigued by the five exclamation points, with the result that my Super Mogambo Senses (SMS) switched to high-alert status, looking for signs of danger, at the sight of them. Full Story
Friday was to be a day of departure for Egypt's Mubarak, but it wasn’t yet to be. It won’t be long now imagine though as many countries are joining together and are ever closer to asking and even forcing him to leave now. While de-parture didn’t occur, de-bottom seems to have for Silver and Gold. Even US indices are shedding off all the calls for a correction in what is an unprecedented run higher. Markets don’t work like this unless they are being propped up. Full Story
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