08 July 2014

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The 'Independent Fed' - Deutschland vs Brasilien


Gold and silver were hit by a trailing stop boogie woogie this morning, a half feeble effort to shake out the long who are running their stop loss orders a bit close.  These sorts of things do not bother us because we have an intermediate to longer term investment horizon, right?  lol.

Otherwise gold and silver finished largely unchanged on the day.

Much more interesting than this lazy Summer trade is the World Cup game in progress, with Germany dominating Brazil, 5-0.   The Germans unleashed a four goal torrent in a six minute period of the first half.  I thought one of the goals was a replay.   Brazil has not allowed five goals in an entire World Cup series since 1998. 

Well you know what they say, lucky in the World Cup, unlucky in holding on to your gold reserves.

We *might* see some precious metals action in the latter part of July in the metals, based on some things the BRICs may be doing and some derivatives related events, but I am not overly excited about it yet.  The Fed has the markets in hand it appears. 

In response to a couple of emails I would like to take a minute to remind you all again that the Federal Reserve system is owned by their member banks, who receive a 6% dividend for their shares from the profits that the NY Fed makes on its market operations.

It is not a government entity.  It operates under the license of the law passed in 1913.   The Fed has not always existed, and the central bank in the US has an interesting and sometimes controversial history.

Although the government has some oversight, which the Fed peddles hard on their own websites, and can take measures if they have the will for it,  the Fed is a private institution with a significant amount of its market power concentrated in New York.  The Fed has its own level of 'opaqueness and independence.'   One can debate whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, or just a thing.  But I did want to reiterate that popular misconception.

For now this is the dog days of Summer, and a good time to do work outside, and to spend time with your family if you can.

We had a quick lesson in apartments for rent in Brooklyn, as our number one son will be starting graduate school in the NYC area this Fall. The rents and house prices in the NYC metro area, including Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Jersey area around Hoboken and Jersey City, are in a barking mad real estate bubble related to the rebound in the financial sector jobs and profits.

I am hearing of many places being purchased and then left vacant as 'stores of wealth' by overseas investment money.  And this is not even as intense as the things I am hearing from friends in London.   House prices in the NYC are back to pre-financial collapse levels and beyond in many areas according to Zillow

Have a pleasant evening.




 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Alcoa Kicks Off the 2Q Earnings Season


After the bell Alcoa beat earnings and revenues to kick off the second quarter earnings season.

It was interesting to hear Matt Miller and Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg TV extrapolating a strong year for the SP 500 stocks off this one result.  And it was funny to see Julie Hyman correct Barry's mistake about the increase in Alcoa's revenues, which were flat year over year.  She is often a breath of fresh air in the fog of endless jawboning.

I did take off the short position I had put on US equities on Thursday. It was a fairly cynical bet on a standard 'wash and rinse.' Now we can see if anything more significant develops, but for now its the same old, same old.

Have a pleasant evening.



 

07 July 2014

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Gold and Silver Cap and Consolidate


Not much happened in the gold and silver markets, with both closing almost unchanged.

This was a very dull trade, with more nonsensical things being said in the media.

Dave from Denver reports that there were some gyrations in the JNUG junior miners ETF into the close:
"At 3:59 p.m. 60,000 shares of JNUG trade and drop the price from a high of $27.05 to a low of $26.43 - all within 60 seconds. Then at the close, 30,000 shares trade and cause JNUG to bounce back up to its close of $27.06.

4.6% of JNUG's total volume traded today in the last 120 seconds. Over the entire course of the trading day - 6.5 hours - JNUG averaged 4,974 share per minute. In the last two minutes it averaged 45,000 share per minute."
Have a pleasant evening.


SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Dog Days

 

An exceptionally boring day as the US markets reopened after the three day holiday weekend.

Stocks were weak for most of the day, but rebounded slightly off the lows into the close.

These are the real dog days of summer, and volumes are lackluster to say the least.

Have a pleasant evening.

03 July 2014

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Another Dog that Did Not Bark - Shanghai Silver


The 'headline numbers' for the Non-Farm Payrolls came in better than expected.

Gold and silver held their places well, and especially silver which is now the lead sled dog for my thinking.  This is because July is an active month on the Comex of course but also because of the levels of physical inventory, both here and abroad.
 

I took a look at the payroll numbers and did not see anything brazenly out of line. Except of course that it is not the number of jobs being added that is important, unless you are some metric toting bureaucrat trying to hit some number as a symbolic victory.

No, it is all about the quality of the jobs, especially the median wage and personal income, as it feeds into and sustains the kind of mass organic buying that boosts and sustains aggregate demand.

I noticed that some of the Neo-Keynesians have been launching their flaccid attacks on the evil Austrians.

Now, as you may know, I am certainly no Austrian economist and have quite a bit of respect for Keynes himself, if not for all of his acolytes.  But the way in which the Neo-Keynesians are rallying around their phony recovery flag causes me to suspect that things behind the curtain are not going well, and that they are afraid. Not that this makes the Austrians right with their tough economic love for others less worthy, especially those of the lower classes as they would define them.  There are not too many of the common people heading for Galtopia, except as servants and cogs in the wheels of the ubermenschen.

Obviously setting public policy principles top down and then doing things to achieve them directly would be the thing to do, and dropping this newest canard that objective scientific economic principles dictate anything except what their puppeteers wish them to say. But alas, that all gets lost in the noise and the humbug of modern thinking, especially the thought for pay so prevalent these days amongst the disgraced professions.

July may still prove to be an interesting month, and I suspect that before the year end we will see some pet economic theories in addition to the efficient market hypothesis shot to hell.

For the Yanks, have a pleasant holiday weekend.

And for the rest of the world, please try to carry on.

See you Sunday evening. Remember the poor souls who have none to love or care for them. You may some day find yourself amongst them. If not in this world, then perhaps in the next.   As Jack Kerouac said,  'they build their own hells.'  And they are locked tight, from the inside.




SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Dow 17,000


The Dow Industrial Average closed over 17,000 for the first time today.

The markets are now closed, in early observance of the 4th of July national holiday.

The equity markets are becoming overextended here. They more become a little more overextended before this nonsense is done, and then we will see a pullback of sorts. Wash and rinse.

Have a nice holiday weekend.






02 July 2014

PBS Frontline: To Catch a Trader


“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

Adam Smith

Got inside trading information?

Got a co-located high speed trading server?

Got a privileged position of trust in society or even better, in the game itself?

Then buddy, you got edge.