Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Stayin' Alive

The markets are waiting for the Greek elections, a resolution of some sort to the European situation, and the Fed.

"All I wanted was just what everybody else wants, you know, to be loved.

Every man I knew went to bed with Gilda-- and woke up with me."

Rita Hayworth

As a side note, this brought back some fond memories for me. SwissAir would sometimes feature an old movie like 'Singing in the Rain' or 'Casablanca' on their international flights.

One time I was flying on the night flight from New York to Zurich with a number of professional musicians on their way to perform at the Marlborough Jazz Festival.

We had a lively good time watching Rita Hayworth and drinking some liberal toasts to her dancing prowess. It was certainly a pleasant flight.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

Marking time more than anything else.

I recovered my computer platform from a catastrophic hardware failure.

Just one of those things.

Puzzled About QE? Watch the Adjusted Monetary Base

Quantitative easing is generally reflected in the expansion of the Monetary Base of the Federal Reserve Bank.

There could be instances wherein monetary expansion in the nature of QE could be done 'off balance sheet' in the manner of swaps, etc.

But in general, unless the monetary base starts contracting, not just stable, then QE is still in place. It can change to a form of 'qualitative easing' without affecting the overall nominal value of the base.

Are Stocks In a New Bear Market?

Maybe they will be, but the charts do not show that yet.

I prefer to use the Russell 2000 when determining such things, because the other indices are too narrow and subject to single sector vagaries and manipulation. This is especially true of the Dow Industrials and the NDX.

So far what we have seen is about a 50% retracement of the most recent rally leg.

One might also make the case that stocks have entered a trading range after the V bottom formed after the financial crisis.

But they could break down further from here.   Let's see what happens.