Gold Daily Chart: Update of the Cup, and the Long Term Golden Bowl

Gold did a 50% retracement in its most recent leg up with an intraday drop to 1222. 

Now we can see if the backing and filling is over, and a base can be built for another try at the breakout.

A reader from Strasbourg sent this chart of inflation-adjusted gold, and suggested I take a look at it for a longer term 'cup and handle.' So I did some basic charting and calculation that are shown below.



That's not a cup, its a golden bowl!

Who knows if this is valid. Let's just call it gold bull porn, and leave it at that.

Here is a short clip from one of my favorite Russian films Дневной дозор, Dnevnoi Dozor, or in English Day Watch. It is the sequel to Night Watch, both under the direction of the Russian director Timur Bekmambetov who went on to create Wanted starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy.

I don't know why, but it seems appropriate to a discussion of the long term gold trend.

Rumour: BP To Cut Its Dividend Next Week, and Yet Another Goldman Sachs Stock Scandal

This is making the rounds as a rumour, but it has some credibility, and I have been expecting it as they need to set aside serious reserves for litigation and for the clean up of damages caused.

The company is in deep trouble, and the CEO is making all the classic errors we learned not to do in the crisis management courses in business school. Its shocking really at how badly he has performed.

The rumour is so widespread that I am sure it will make the wires in some form, if only a denial, and I will look for it. I do not expect BP to declare bankruptcy as this other story suggests, although it would be an interestingly foul gambit to try and avoid its liabilities.

British Petroleum had been at the heart of darkness many years ago, as in the example of the Iranian coup d'etat of 1953 and imprisonment of Iran's democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh, followed by over twenty years of tyranny and torture. Some think this is what had inspired Eisenhower's parting words about the Anglo-American military-industrial complex.

Although through aggressive use of public relations had improved their image, BP have long been noted by investigative reporters and environmentalists as a bad boy among the corporate multinationals, preferring to spend money on PR, politicians, and regulators rather than planning and safety. BP: Slick Operator and BP's Other Spill by Greg Palast for example, and those radicals at the Seattle Times: BP's Trail of Accidents and Scandals Lead to Alaska. When Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska winks and says "I'm your gal," she just might not be winking at you, chump change.

And let us not forget the BP Texas City Refinery Explosion of 2005 and the urgent calls for more oversight and attention to safety.

I thought it was interesting that BP bought the search term "oil spill" from Google to better direct the flow of information from the public.

And then of course there is the issue of insider selling that occurred prior to the more complete release of the extent of the Gulf oil leak disaster involving BP executives and former executives, and of course Goldman Sachs. Gulf Oil Spill to Drag Goldman Sachs into Trading Scandal?

This is not to say that all corporations are corrupt all the time, not at all. But neither are they naturally good, all the time. It underscores the need for regulation, and investigations into the type of corruption which was apparently widespread in the agencies that regulated the banks, the oil drilling industry, and the stock markets. Maintaining a system of justice, the rule of law, is not something you do once and then sit back and then trust to the natural goodness of men and women to limit their profits and do the right thing when no one is watching. Especially when you permit corruption to create enormous temptations and opportunities in the spirit of 'greed is good.'

"How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of their warfare perished." Slowly but surely.

And I see that the utterly discredited econo-propagandist Art Laffer is now on Bloomberg television being prompted with softballs from the corporatist spokesmodels Matt Miller and Carol Massar.

"O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy."

William Blake, Songs of Experience

Postscript: In case you are interested here is a brief, simple, but decent analysis of Blake's poem, The Sick Rose. The first twenty or so analyses that Google recommended would set my old teachers turning in their graves.

Net Asset Value of Certain Precious Metals Trusts and Funds

Interestingly, the Sprott premium has been driven down to near parity with that of GTU, which has no meaningful redemption policy for its gold.

I suspect this is the result of the ham-handed way in which Sprott managed its recent sale of additional units, and the munificence with which it delivered shares to the underwriters at prices well below the market. If I had done it that way, I would have been ashamed.

TORONTO, June 1 /CNW/ - Sprott Physical Gold Trust (the "Trust") (NYSE: PHYS / TSX: PHY.U), a trust created to invest and hold substantially all of its assets in physical gold bullion and managed by Sprott Asset Management LP, today announced that it has completed its follow-on offering of 24,840,000 Units at US$11.25 per Unit for gross proceeds of US$279,450,000 (the "Offering"). This includes the exercise in full by the underwriters of their over-allotment option.

I do expect the PHYS premium to get back closer to long term trend after the excess shares are sold into the market and the profits of the underwriters are booked. The redemption feature is attractive, but the method in which Eric Sprott treated his shareholders may dampen future enthusiasm for his products.

This just serves to remind one that no trust or fund is a long term substitute for owning the real thing.

Gold Bulls Are In Their Cups and the Bull Market in Confidence Games and Voodoo Economics

A friend and correspondent over at BullionVault reminded me the other day that some have been watching what they consider to be a larger cup and handle on the gold daily chart going back to 2008.

My depiction of that longer term chart formation is below.



I had carefully considered that interpretation last year but the handle formed much higher relative to the cup than I would prefer. Further, it did not form like a classic handle on the retracements. Instead I considered it to be a simple inverse Head and Shoulders continuation pattern in this bull market, from the extreme selling in the liquidity crisis.

The patterns have similar pricing objectives, unless you draw the lines as diagonals and attempt to measure off the top of the handle. Either way, each is a chart formation that is active and working with objectives north of where the cash price is today.

There are two reasons to use a cup and handle versus an inverse H&S. The first is that the breakout action on the handle is more easily charted and evaluated. A breakout through the neckline of any H&S is merely a binary event, whereas a handle permits more gradation. Head and Shoulder patterns are simple creatures. The second reason is that some people do not believe that an inverse H&S is an appropriate continuation pattern, and can only be used for a clear 'bottom' of a downtrend. I obviously do not agree with the latter. They can often act as continuation patterns after a severe selloff in a bull market trend that remains intact.

And there is of course, with the advent of modern computerized charting tools, the temptation to overcomplicate a chart and fill the page with far too many lines and circles and diagonal relationships to the point of obscurity, as though a Euclid of Alexandria had thrown up a lifetime of drawing on a basic price chart.

As an aside, sometimes readers will say things like 'So and So is a respected chart authority and he says...' And this is provided without justification, on the basis of authority. Well, one must always listen respectfully to learned opinions, but then look carefully at the empirical evidence, in a scientific manner, which in my book trumps theory and the 'rules' made by men.

When I was working at Bell Labs a very learned and internationally respected authority (and my boss' boss which was the ultimate power of that bureaucracy) told me that I "obviously did not understand information theory" when I presented the case for developing higher speed modems (> 9600 bps) , Digital Subscriber Line technology, and high speed local area transmission over unshielded twisted pairs, well in advance of their formative discussions on the CCITT and US IEEE committees. In other words, I have made my career in not accepting the conventional wisdom and authority of the day. Sometimes what you think you know prepares you for a world that no longer exists, because it was an illusion.

And that goes double for macroeconomics, which seems now more like marketing than mathematics, more astrology than physics. The US financial system is largely a confidence game, or more appropriately a racket dominated by rival white collar crime gangs.

Far too many economists tell people what they wish to hear, or what their masters are promoting, and attempt to give it the trappings of respectability with professional jargon, self-referential theories and elaborate faux proofs, with the trappings of equations based on falsified assumptions. If you want to measure a contemporary economist, see what they are saying, if anything, about reforming and restructuring the financial system.

A government needs to decide first what sort of nation it wishes to be, and then use economics as one means of sorting out more granular choices among policy decisions. To treat economics as a primary determinant of social policy is to perpetuate the hoax of the efficient markets hypothesis and the inherent goodness of 'free trade.' But it does helps economists to gain funding from the plutocrats, and serves to divert the public from the discussion of meaningful reforms.

Finally, at this point in my third career, I AM a 'chart authority' of sorts in my little circle, and it is my money on the line when I am investing, so I think I have some say, at least in my own kitchen, as long as she-who-must-be-considered is out front. lol.

Here is a picture of the pullback on the cup and handle we have been watching for the past few weeks. So far it is as expected.