Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

"It’s easier to dismiss something not quite fully understood, and I think that’s behind much of the recent negativity towards the COT as an analytical tool."

Ted Butler, Butler Research, 27 February 2013

Today was 'risk on' for stocks and therefore we had a pullback in the precious metals sector.

The pigmen are feeling pretty cocky about things. And fear of the sequester is diminishing.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Down the Corporatist Rabbit Hole

"And this last enactment [affirmation of Voting Rights in 2006], not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same.

Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.

It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

Antonin Scalia, Speaking About the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Feb 27, 2013

I just don't have the words.

We had a big up day in the kleptocracy today, for the usual made up reasons.

It was higher because the markets are beginning to lose their fear of 'the sequester.' And of course, there is a surfeit of hot money in the financial sector that is chasing paper assets, pushing them around the plate.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Pop Go the Weasels

Gold and silver got legs when Bernanke confirmed that the FOMC was just talking about ending QE. And I think we knew that.

But apparently the metals market didn't right? I think this rally has everything to do with the end to this brazenly artificial paper selling into the options expiration yesterday.

So what next?

Gold is approaching a 50 percent retracement of this big waterfall decline that was driven by the funds. While I feel comfortable in buying long term straight up bullion in moments of such extreme oversold weakness, I am not quite confident yet in taking more longs into a trade just yet.

The sequester is dead ahead, and with the markets this wild and loosely regulatred, it is hard to have conviction using any kind of leverage.

The long term prospects for precious metals remain unchanged, perhaps slightly better given the lack of serious reform in the real economy and the broken financial system.  

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Bernanke Bounce

Housing was rosy this morning, and perhaps deceptively so.

Bernanke calmed the markets and gave the bulls some cajones to by the dip.

Some dip.

The sequester looms large. A lot of bets are on that they will kick the can down the road again.

I'm not willing to take that bet at this time. I am too uncertain here about the short term in this phony market, after this big spike in the VIX. So I have taken a lot of money off the table.