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Note: addition in gold chart showing a potential trading range
At last a change of pace!
A series of determined and very heavy-handed bear raids took down both gold and silver in the afternoon trade, and of course their associated investments.
It is a bit early for an options expiration smackdown. The only thing I see on the economic calendar is the Consumer Price Index report for December. Today's Initial Jobless Claims number was a high end buzz kill, but the Street brushed it off.
It looks as though gold may enter a trading range here, as a determined effort to stop its advance gains seasonal traction. I think the 1455 target should be set aside if a trading trading range develops more fully, and a breakout target be set instead. Let's wait and see what happens around January 24 week.
As a reminder, US markets are closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day.
A last hour rally took US stocks back closer to almost unchanged.
Onward and upward. In the go-go 1960's the 'big thing' was plastics. Today it is gourmet cupcakes.
See the SP 500 with Ten Day Moving average for Today's Stock Commentary.
Whatever the case, try not to get in front of this market. Even death by a thousand paper cuts is possible.
As a reminder, US markets are closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day.
The picture is similar for the SP 500 cash market.
Someone who keeps track of these things said that this is the most consistent thirty day rally in US equities since 1929, with the SP never closing once below its 10 day moving average.
Do you think that maybe a Wall Street banking cartel is manipulating stock prices higher now as they did that year? Do you think if it is true it will end badly as it did then?
Intel after the bell, and JP Morgan reports tomorrow morning before the open.
VIX seems to be reaching its nadir, conversely the heights of complacency.
Do you think if the US financial system blows up again the Fed and the Wall Street crowd will claim complete ignorance, point to some nameless act of God, and simply blame the government and the public? And will Timmy and Ben appear before Congress (again) and demand many more billions to save the banking system with ugly threats of dire consequences?
Do you think Benny will apologize for being simply mistaken in his theory like Greenspan did and claim a 'mulligan,' and brazenly go on? As an aside, if Bernanke is knighted by QE II (the sovereign not the subsidy) I think its game over.
If a stock market asset bubble does collapse and wipe out many investors, do you think the talking hairball and the cheerleaders on bubblevision will once again say, "Well nobody MADE people buy stocks."
If you do, you might just be right. Or perhaps for now the band will just play on, Nearer My God to Thee, to keep the upper deck evacuations orderly...
You may be there, but I doubt the usual suspects will be at their posts in the wheelhouse.
What dark visions I have some days.
