SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Another Big Slide on Global Growth Jitters

"There was a strange temper in the air. Unsatisfied by material prosperity, the nations turned fiercely toward strife, internal or external. National passions unduly exalted in the decline of religion, burned beneath the surface of every land with fierce if shrouded fires. Almost one might think the world wished to suffer. Certainly men everywhere were eager to dare."

Winston Churchill

Despite the confidence exuding from Davos, stocks were selling off fairly hard as the paint that was applied to the tape at the end of 2013 came peeling off in chunks of profit taking.

VIX spiked up hard, as punters sought safety in puts and bid them up.

Ok Daniel-san, this was 'wax off' to the end of year 'wax on.'

What do we do next?

Next week is a big earnings week, and after some global follow through I suspect we will see stocks taking their cues from the corporate results. And so we might expect a volatile week.

I have included the US economic calendar for next week below. 

Have a pleasant weekend.

Inside London: 'Demand Delivery For the True Price of Gold'

Buba is the nickname for Deutsche Bundesbank, the central bank of Germany.

I nearly fell out of my chair when I read a description of the divergence between the paper and physical gold markets from the Inside London column of the Financial Times.

"But one day the ties that bind this pixelated gold may break, with potentially catastrophic results. So if you fancy gold at today’s depressed price, learn from Buba and demand delivery."

And this in the prince of mainstream financial publications.   Quick, alert the spinmeisters for Davos man that the natives are growing restless.  

As the fellow says, one day the ties that bind the actual and the traded commodity will snap. So if you fancy gold at today's depressed price,  take delivery.

"In June last year the average volume of gold cleared in London hit 29m ounces per day. The world’s mines are producing 90m ounces per year. The traded volume was many times the cleared volume.

The paper gold in the London Bullion Market takes the familiar forms that bankers have turned into profit machines: futures, options, leveraged trades, collateralised obligations, ETFs . . . a storm of exotic instruments, each of which is carefully logged, cross-checked and audited.

Or perhaps not. High-flying traders find such backroom work tedious, and prefer to let some drone do it, just as they did with those money-market instruments that fuelled the banking crisis. The drones will have full control of the paper trail, won’t they?

There’s surely no chance that the Fed’s little delivery difficulty has anything to do with the cat’s-cradle of pledges based on the gold in its vaults?

 

...But one day the ties that bind this pixelated gold may break, with potentially catastrophic results. So if you fancy gold at today’s depressed price, learn from Buba and demand delivery."

Read the entire article in the Financial Times here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Do It To Me One More Time

Gold and silver had a nice upside pop today, running up to resistance on gold, and the miners finally showed some spirit.

Watching gold and bonds move higher in unison suggests that we were seeing either an asset reallocation out of equities, or more likely an old fashioned 'flight to safety.'

This precious metals market needs follow through more than ever, to break the downtrend which is an intermediate trend. We have some semblance of an inverse head and shoulders on the chart, little formations of them nested in larger formations, like fractals.

Let's see another up move like today's, and a few more times to confirm it.

There was no movement in the Comex gold warehouse, typical for the non-active month of January.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Wash and Rinse

China's economic growth numbers had the markets wobbly this morning, and stocks moved lower in what looked like a technical trade. Existing Housing was off a bit, but not enough for a sell off.

And they bought the dip. In days like this, it is not so much the initial reaction to news that matters, but rather the reaction of traders to the reaction, and this market is about as cynically bullish as they come.

So what next. Until the VIX gets some real upside legs and serious support is broken to the downside, shorting is for scalping. The Fed's float of liquidity has the markets pointed north, although there may not be a lot of substance underneath them.

It is a dangerous situation, but if anything the Fed and their friends have shown a propensity for rolling the dice-- with other peoples' money.

Have a pleasant evening.