Gold World News Flash |
- Past & Future Speculative Bubbles – What They Indicate for Gold and Silver!
- Gold and Silver Miners Making Waves and New Trends
- A Message To All The Unleveraged Gold Investors
- The Big Picture behind Germany Taking Half of Its Gold Home
- Bill Murphy, Andy Hoffman, Bix Weir: SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS NOW – YouTube
- John Manfreda – Obvious Gold Manipulation – YouTube
- Precious Metals and Miners Making Waves and New Trends
- David Morgan Interview with INN, 2013 SILVER Predictions
- Netanyahu Deploys 'Syrian' Iron-Dome As Israeli Minister Claims US Preparing 'Surgical' Strikes Against Iran
- Canada’s $800-billion housing problem – The Globe and Mail
- Rent vs Own (Canada) – YouTube
- Germany Fires a Warning Shot at the Fed
- $600 Billion In Trades In Four Years: How Apple Puts Even The Most Aggressive Hedge Funds To Shame
- Perhaps a Crumble Rather Than a Collapse – Chapter One
- Kitco Shows Recent Plunge to Negative In Gold Lease Rates
- Gold & Silver: Its What the Charts Say, Not Fundamentals Or Opinion, and the Charts Say?
- Warning for American silver investors RE: Monster boxes as poker chips – YouTube
- Rick Rule – Mining Shares at Deep Discounts Now
- HAS THE FIRST CURRENCY CRISIS BEGUN?
- Rosen - 2 Key Charts & The Big Picture For Gold & Silver
- Corn - Smart Money Putting On Short-Squeeze Clinic
- DO YOU BELIEVE SHILLS OR SHILLER?
- In The News Today
- Jim's Mailbox
- Patterns of Promise & Progress - Failure is an Option
- How Can the U.S. Grow Its Way Out of Its Present Predicament? Here's How
- Gold & Silver: Its What the Charts Say, Not Fundamentals Or Opinion, and the Charts Say…
- Join GATA at the California Resource Investment Conference on Feb. 24-25
- Rick Rule About Junior & Exploration Miners: The Sector Is A Disaster
- Japanese Yen: Lower Short-Term, But Higher Longer-Term
- Psss, Its Not Going To Be Different This Time
- Gold And Silver - All Fundamentals/Opinions Are Useless
- The Fed’s Plan B - "We're Going to Kill the Dollar"
- Ignore Wall Street Cheerleaders: Market Technicals, Fundamentals & Other Info Says Otherwise!
- The Time is Now For All Gold Investors!!!!
- Alasdair Macleod: Bank of England gold -- the doubts remain
| Past & Future Speculative Bubbles – What They Indicate for Gold and Silver! Posted: 28 Jan 2013 12:05 AM PST (January 2013) This is not a prediction of future prices of gold and silver; it is an indication of what could happen in a speculative bubble environment based on the history of previous bubbles.... {This is a content summary only. Click on the blog title to continue reading this post, share your comments, browse the website, and more!}    |
| Gold and Silver Miners Making Waves and New Trends Posted: 27 Jan 2013 11:18 PM PST The precious metals sector has been dormant since both gold and silver topped in 2011. But the long term bull market remains intact. As long as we do not have the price of gold close below the lower yellow box on the monthly chart then technical speaking precious metals should continue much higher. Large consolidation periods (yellow boxes) provide investors with great insight for investments looking forward 6-18 months upon a breakout in either direction (up or down). The issue with investing during these times is the passage of time. One can hold a position for months and sometimes years having their investments fluctuate adding extra stress to their life when they really do not need to. |
| A Message To All The Unleveraged Gold Investors Posted: 27 Jan 2013 11:10 PM PST My Dear Friends, I have been working constantly since Friday to answer your emails. Being indoors all this time, I had to go out and get some fresh air. To my astonishment upon my return there were more incoming emails than I have answered in the last three days. Clearly, I will not get Continue reading A Message To All The Unleveraged Gold Investors |
| The Big Picture behind Germany Taking Half of Its Gold Home Posted: 27 Jan 2013 11:00 PM PST Gold Forecaster |
| Bill Murphy, Andy Hoffman, Bix Weir: SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS NOW – YouTube Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:01 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| John Manfreda – Obvious Gold Manipulation – YouTube Posted: 27 Jan 2013 09:54 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Precious Metals and Miners Making Waves and New Trends Posted: 27 Jan 2013 09:48 PM PST The precious metals sector has been dormant since both gold and silver topped in 2011. But the long term bull market remains intact. As long as we do not have the price of gold close below the lower yellow box on the monthly ... Read More...  |
| David Morgan Interview with INN, 2013 SILVER Predictions Posted: 27 Jan 2013 08:45 PM PST from silver investor.com: |
| Posted: 27 Jan 2013 08:00 PM PST Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says his nation must prepare for the threat of a chemical attack from Syria, amid concern at enemy efforts to test a post-election coalition Israel, and, as Bloomberg reports, has deployed its new Iron Dome anti-missile system near the border with its northern neighbor. Along with this concern, as many have perhaps suspected, the Israeli Defense Minister confirmed yesterday that the US has prepared plans for a 'surgical' military operation to delay Iran's nuclear program. As The Jerusalem Post reports, Ehud Barak, speaking in Davos, does not believe any military operation against Iran would devolve into a "full fledged war the size of the Iraqi war" but rather "there should be a readiness and an ability to launch a surgical operation that will delay them by a significant time frame and probably convince them that it won't work because the world is determined to block them." Barak added that in the past the US has been heavy-handed but that under Barack Obama, the United States has "prepared quite sophisticated, fine, extremely fine, scalpels," if the worse comes to the worst - even though the Israeli preference would be to end the nuclear threat diplomatically , calling for tougher sanctions (though he expressed doubt that diplomacy would lead to success). Just another geopolitical hotspot that the world's markets choose to ignore in deference to the one true leader - central bankers.
Via Bloomberg,
Via The Jerusalem Post,
|
| Canada’s $800-billion housing problem – The Globe and Mail Posted: 27 Jan 2013 07:39 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Rent vs Own (Canada) – YouTube Posted: 27 Jan 2013 07:23 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Germany Fires a Warning Shot at the Fed Posted: 27 Jan 2013 06:41 PM PST
Germany has the second largest Gold reserves in the world behind the US. Since the early ‘80s, it has stored the majority of these reserves with the NY Fed (45% vs. 13% in London, 11% in Paris and the remaining 31% in Frankfurt).
With that in mind, everyone needs to be aware that last Monday Germany’s Bundesbank announced it will be moving a major portion of its reserves from the US and all of its reserves from France back to Frankfurt.
Nearly half of Germany’s gold reserves are held in a vault at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — billions of dollars worth of postwar geopolitical history squirreled away for safe keeping below the streets of Lower Manhattan.
Now the German central bank wants to make a big withdrawal — 300 tons in all.
On Wednesday, the Bundesbank said that it would begin moving some of the reserves, the second-largest stock in the world after that of the United States. The goal is to house more than 50 percent of German gold in Bundesbank vaults in Frankfurt by 2020, up from a little less than a third today, the bank said…
The new policy will include the complete withdrawal of 374 tons of German gold stored at the Banque de France in Paris, about 11 percent of the total. Bundesbank officials were quick to note that the decision was not a reflection of French trustworthiness. Rather, because France and Germany now share the euro, there is no need for reserves as insurance against currency crises.
This announcement came with the usual political statements that the decision had nothing to do with a lack of trust between the Bundesbank and the US Fed or Bank of France, but the message is obvious: Germany sees the writing on the wall and is moving to secure its Gold reserves.
Remember, Germany has spent the better part of two years preparing for financial chaos. Since the autumn of 2011, it has:
All of these are verifiable facts that the Western Media has avoided talking about. It is very easy to connect the dots here: Germany is implementing a contingency plan to put a firewall around its financial system for when the EU finally breaks down.
A final note here: the tension between the world’s Central Banks just increased dramatically.
Since the Great Crisis began in 2008, the world’s Central Banks have collectively pumped $10 trillion into the global financial system. Every major Central Bank from Germany to the US and China wants to debase its currency to benefit exports and facilitate dealing with its debt load (even China sports a real Debt to GDP north fo 200%).
This competitive debasement has lead to increased tension between the world’s Central Banks. You will never hear their stated outright for the simple reason that the single most important responsibility of the Central Banks is to maintain confidence in the system.
However, underneath the veneer of goodwill and the occasional necessary coordinated intervention, tensions are rising between Central Banks. When the US debases the US Dollar it pushes the Euro higher. This hurts German exports which in turn angers the Bundesbank.
The Bundesbank fired a warning shot at the Fed last autumn when it announced it wanted to have its Gold reserves at the Fed audited. To be clear here: no one of major financial import has ever questioned the Fed’s trustworthiness before. However, at the time of this announcement Germany stated it had no intentions of actually moving its reserves.
Fast-forward to today and Germany has not only audited and checked its Gold reserves at the Fed but it is now moving them. In plain terms, Germany has told the world that A) it does not trust the Fed and B) it is through playing around.
This situation will likely be getting worse going forward. The fact that Germany will be removing all of its Gold reserves from France certainly doesn’t bode well for future German French relations if push ever comes to shove (it’s not as though Europe has a history of getting along well).
On that note, we have produced a FREE Special Report available to all investors titled What Europe’s Collapse Means For You and Your Savings.
This report features ten pages of material outlining our independent analysis of the real debt situation in Europe (numbers far worse than is publicly admitted), the true nature of the EU banking system, and the systemic risks Europe poses to investors around the world… including the US.
It also outlines a number of investments to profit from this; investments that anyone can use to take advantage of the European Debt Crisis.
Best of all, this report is 100% FREE. You can pick up a copy today at: http://gainspainscapital.com/eu-report/
Best Regards,
Phoenix Capital Research
PS. We offer several FREE Special Reports to help investors navigate other risks in the financial system. They include:
Preparing Your Portfolio For Obama’s Economic Nightmare
How to Protect Yourself From Inflation
And last but not least…
Bullion 101: Everything You Need to Know About Investing in Gold and Silver Bullion…
You can pick up free copies of all of the above at:
|
| $600 Billion In Trades In Four Years: How Apple Puts Even The Most Aggressive Hedge Funds To Shame Posted: 27 Jan 2013 06:36 PM PST Everyone knows that for the better part of the past year Apple, Inc. ("AAPL", or "The Company") was the world's biggest company by market cap, with Exxon finally regaining that title on Friday, following AAPL's latest price drop in the aftermath of its disappointing earnings. Most know that AAPL aggressively uses all legal tax loopholes to pay as little State and Federal tax as possible, despite being one of the world's most profitable companies. Many also know, courtesy of our exclusive from September, that Apple also is the holding company for Braeburn Capital: a firm which with a few exceptions (Bridgewater; JPM's CIO prop trading desk) also happens to be one of the world's largest hedge funds, whose function is to manage Apple's massive cash hoard, with virtually zero requirements, and whose obligation is to make sure that AAPL's cash gets laundered legally and efficiently in a way that complies with prerogative #1: avoid paying taxes. What few if any know, is that as part of its cash management obligations, Braeburn, and AAPL by extension, has conducted a mindboggling $600 billion worth of gross notional trades in just the past four years, consisting of buying and selling assorted unknown securities, or some $250 billion in 2012 alone: a grand total which represents some $1 billion per working day on average, and which puts the net turnover of some 99% of all hedge funds to shame! Finally, what nobody knows, except for the recipients of course, is just how much in trade commissions AAPL has paid over the past four years on these hundreds of billions in trades to the brokering banks, many (or maybe all) of which may have found this commission revenue facilitating AAPL having a "Buy" recommendation: a rating shared by 52, or 83% of the raters, despite the company's wiping out of one year in capital gains in a few short months. The Perfectly Legal Tax Evasion Scheme Apple's massive cash hoard is something that gets its 15 minutes of fame each and every quarter, because for now at least, it keeps growing and growing and growing. However, that is not exactly correct. In fact, the company's cash and cash equivalents at December 31, 2012 is just $16.2 billion: barely $9 billion more than it was 4 years ago, on December 31, 2008. Where the bulk of AAPL's profits are kept, however, is not in cash and equivalents, but in various undisclosed short- and long-term securities. It is these, and particularly the latter, that have soared in a near parabolic fashion in the past 4 years. As the chart below shows, while cash and short-term marketable securities have been virtually flat for the better part of the past 16 quarters, it is the long-term marketable securities that have exploded from just $2.5 billion to a whopping $97.3 billion. So why does AAPL funnel its profits in a fashion that redirects it to investments instead of domestically hoarded cash? Simple: to take advantage of offshore venues which allow it to avoid paying any tax on the cash that gets redirected for trading purposes. As per the company's filings, of the massive $137.1 billion in cash and investments AAPL has access to, a near record 68.7%, or $94.2 billion, is held offshore. The chart above means that contrary to popular disinformation, AAPL "only" has ready access to some $43 billion in domestically held cash for corporate purposes such as dividends, stock buybacks and local M&A. The rest of the cash is essentially in offshore lockboxes, which are non-recourse for domestic corporate purposes, absent repatriation. And herein lies the rub. From the latst 10-Q:
Apply a 30% tax to the offshore holdings and suddenly one can see why broad statements that AAPL has some $130/share in cash are largely meaningless: if AAPL wishes to have full access to dispose with this cash as it saw fit, it would first have to pay Uncle Sam some $30/share in cash before it had full recourse. So why does AAPL chose to have cash stock up offshore instead of being able to dispose of it? Simple, and logical. Taxes, or rather the lack thereof. The chart below shows that while AAPL has generated some $136 billion in operating profits in the past four years, the amount of cash taxes it has paid, as per the company's cash flow statements, has been a grand total of $18.6 billion: a 13.6% effective tax rate. And this $18.6 billion also includes taxes paid in offshore venues, so realistically the cash taxes paid in the US are likely well under 10% of profits. The same on a quarter by quarter basis: operating income grows, cash taxes paid stay the same: But far form us making an ethical claim here: AAPL is merely following the same legal loopholes that are available to all, yet made a mockery of the tax shelters used by recent presidential candidates. Perhaps one should ask Congress why these laws are there in the first place to allow the same companies that spend millions on lobbying members of Congress to retain billions in unpaid taxes via various tax shelters: a rather amazing IRR, if only for the corporations involved. None of the above is news, and AAPL's aggressive use of tax loopholes has been known for years. What has not been known is just how the cash from the company's seemingly endless profits gets moved from the Income Statement to the Balance Sheet: profits, which until recently were assumed would grow in perpetuity, until something strange happened: Samsung became cooler and faddier than AAPL, which coupled with accelerated margin erosion at AAPL grappling with an end-consumer who has increasingly less disposable cash flow, has led to a drubbing of the stock to new 52 week lows. A Hedge Fund On Stroids The conventional wisdom of Apple, and by implication of Braeburn, is of a boring old shop which invests its money prudently and cautiously in ultra-safe securities. This is what AAPL itself has to say about its allocation of capital. From the just released 10-Q:
Good but... "primarily" and "generally"? One doesn't have to be an MF Global and JPM London Whale fallout expert to know that Jon Corzine's or Jamie Dimon's (or any other prop trading institution for that matter), was "primarily and "generally" supposed to be invested in highly-rated securities whose objective was avoiding risk and loss. Until it was uncovered they aren't. And as we explained previously, when we dissected AAPL's arm's length asset manager Braeburn, there is little more out there:
Indeed nobody does know just what goes on behind the door of Suite 225 at 730 Sandhill Road in Reno, Nevada where Braeburn in situated. However, one can extrapolate some rather curious things. Such as that starting December 2008, and through December 2012, according to its own filings, AAPL has bought and sold a grand total of $600 billion in "marketable securities", of which the sales alone amount to a whopping 205 billion! What is not shown above is that over the same period, maturities on AAPL's ever-growing portfolio amount to some $82 billion. In other words, between maturities and sales, AAPL has generated nearly $300 billion in cash for investment and reinvestment purposes. Shortening the time frame somewhat, just in 2012 AAPL's gross trading on its securities holdings amounts to a whopping $250 billion, or nearly $1 billion for every working day of the year: an amount that would put the turnover of some 99% of the most active daytrading hedge funds in the US to shame! What is very curious is that even as AAPL's overall portfolio rose and rose, with purchases "primarily" of supposedly safe investment grade securities, an amount which has peaked at $121 billion as of December 31, 2012, the actual quarterly maturity of AAPL's portfolio, or the natural roll off, has decline to a near record low, or just 2.9% of total. How it is possible that the quarterly maturing notional continues to decline even as the portfolio, of both short- and long-term securities grows, is frankly, beyond our meager comprehension skills. What is even more curious is that AAPL can't even make the excuse that it is merely churning its short-term marketable securitie. As the chart below shows, beginning in March 2011, the total amount of sales and maturities exceeds the quarterly total holdings of short-term securities, which naturally implies that a substantial portion of the long-term securities is also being sold. So why would AAPL engage in what increasingly appears to be not only active portfolio management, but extremely aggressive and overzealous portfolio management, one which includes massive trades - buys but more importlanly sales - on a day to day basis? Said otherwise: why is the world's premier maker of gizmos also one of the biggest under-the-radar day traders of unknown securities nobody has ever heard of? * * * We don't know the answer to these questions. We do know however, that if one is indeed engaged in plain vanilla money management, such as investing in ultra safe investments, there would be no need of such aggressive purchases and dispositions of securities. In fact, adding the simple average of the short- and long-term marketable securities holdings of AAPL over the past 4 years amounts to some $59 billion. Yet, as noted above, the total amount of gross trades -buys and sales - over the same period is $600 billion, or a total portfolio turnover of some ten mindboggling times! This is hardly what one would call boring investing in safe securities, and certainly something one would call aggressive to quite aggressive money management, one that not even some of the world's most successful hedge fund managers are equipped or willing to do. Yet Braeburn Capital, a/k/a AAPL, has been doing it for the past 4 years, and does so to the tune of $1 billion per day. * * * Finally, there is the minor question of who exactly is it that executes these trades, or, in other words, which are the banks that have pocketed billions in commissions on AAPL's furiously traded portfolio? We don't know, but we wonder: could it be the same banks that come rain or shine, gave AAPL a Buy rating, one which is still held by some 52 of the 63 banks covering the company, among which naturally are the most prominent brokers of "investment grade" securities: Perhaps it would be very informative one day, years after the AAPL craze is long gone, to inquire just how much money AAPL paid out to any/all of the banks listed above in the form of trade commissions and other forms of "soft dollar" compensation. After all, any client which has conducted some $600 billion in trades in the past 16 quarters is known by one word at every single bank: "dream." And parallel to that, one wonders what AAPL's total profits would have been and thus total marketable securities holdings, how much less the total trading churn and commissions to the sell side would have been had the downgrade battery started long ago, and thus broken the hypnotic and very much reflexive relationship between the world's most profitable company and its "coolness" factor, which in a feedback loop made it sell more products, making its market cap bigger, making its securities holdings larger, and making sellside profits greater, and so on ad inf... until one day it all snapped. * * * The point of the above analysis is to show that when it comes to said cash and marketable securities there is much more than meet the superficial eye, and certainly much, much more than just a summary assessment that "AAPL has nearly $140 billion in cash so it has to hand this cash out to investors." If there is one thing that the above should have made quite clear, it is that just as the AAPL product ecosystem is supposed to ensnare customers into always and only buying AAPL products, so the AAPL's portfolio management "ecosystem" may have made it impossible for AAPL to break away from what is now 4 years of uber-aggressive asset management in the vein of some of the world's most aggressive investors. And that any hopes for a quick and easy disposal of cash to the benefit of shareholders may well not be coming any time soon. * * * Finally, a tangent: if indeed AAPL is invested in plain vanilla fixed income securities, as it reports, amounting to well over $120 billion which have a DV01 in the tens if not hundreds of millions, and if indeed, the great rotation from bonds into stocks has begun, AAPL, which many have jokingly called Fed-lite will suddenly develop a very, very big headache: how to dump over a hundred billion in debt in a market that suddenly has gone if not bidless, the bidweak. Because while the Fed can print its own liquidity, AAPL, well, can't... Source: AAPL public filings |
| Perhaps a Crumble Rather Than a Collapse – Chapter One Posted: 27 Jan 2013 05:48 PM PST Perhaps a Crumble Rather Than a Collapse – Chapter One By Cognitive Dissonance
Why even question the obvious? When contemplating a complex subject, especially one in which I hold a strong emotional investment, I find it extremely valuable to seriously and consistently challenge my own thinking, to play devil's advocate with my oftentimes emotional mind. A 'truth' untested, particularly one I'm emotionally bound to, is little more than a belief, a comforting factoid that confirms my biases rather than enlightening and informing my mind. If I am to progress in my personal development I must test the mettle of my beliefs up to, and if need be well past, their destruction. For only then can I truly be free to exercise, and honor, my personal sovereignty on an everyday basis. So it is that I've been considering the concept of 'collapse' with regard to society and its socioeconomic system(s), both on a personal and collective emotional and psychological basis. While it is always dangerous to paint detailed pictures with broad brushes, to some degree or another we are all emotional human beings. So while the cognitive details may vary (greatly) from person to person, our tendencies and triggers are very similar (partly because of a shared and distorted worldview) and relatively easy to discern if we have the courage to first look deeply within and then apply what we have found to the world around us. A word of warning here because this article is not a technical or fundamental economic analysis, at least not based upon the traditional financial definition of those terms. Among the contrary crowd, of which I proudly count myself a member in good standing, it is widely accepted that an economic collapse that quickly leads to violent social upheaval is not only very possible, but inevitable, a 'given' fact so to speak. For the most part we accept that a collapse is not a question of if, but of when and in what form and of what severity. The consensus is that this rapid socioeconomic decline, when it comes, will be sudden and complete, thus the popular use of the term 'collapse'. This 'a priori' position, which truth be told is simply a strongly held belief, is in serious need of examination if we are to follow our inner Golden Rule, that of questioning everything beginning with ourselves and our most cherished and firmly held beliefs and opinions. Before going any further I wish to emphasize that the following is simply a thought experiment, a mental dalliance and a delicate dance with what if, how about and why not. Just because I argue a position doesn't necessarily mean I'm wed to it or even that I support it. The ultimate purpose of my internal interrogatory is not necessarily to replace my current thinking, but to test it again and again and again, particularly if I consider my thinking solid and essentially beyond reproach. In my opinion this is where true personal courage is born and nurtured, for if I am willing to honestly face myself, particularly those deep dark places even I wish to hide from, then anything I might face externally pales in comparison. Many more times than I care to admit I have found that what I previously thought was a solid conclusion was actually based not upon facts and reasoning, but upon preconceived notions (aka my conditioned worldview) as well as group think and/or consensus seeking. And just as often the real reason for my blind acceptance of certain facts and conclusions was to push my confirmation bias endorphin triggers again and again, as all severely addicted drug addicts are compelled to do. And boy oh boy do I love triggering my confirmation bias. There is no other drug induced high quite like knowing that I'm right and you're wrong………except knowing that I'm right and everyone else is wrong. Running with the (contrary) herd Rather than denying or rejecting the notion that we are deeply influenced by the herd, a typical egoic response even if the herd is considered contrary (and don't forget that the herd, contrary or not, might simply be a construct of my mind and populated solely by me, myself and I) if we wish to consider ourselves to be sentient sovereign beings then we must remain constantly alert to, and aware of, the herd's influence on our emotional and spiritual centering. In addition, we need to be ever vigilant of its corrosive effects on our thought process and the conclusions we draw from within that distortion. This is the big lie that influences us all, that while we might be part of a herd (if we can even manage to admit that much) we are thoughtful, intelligent and educated adults and thus not really affected by the herd to any significant degree. But common sense and life experience tells us otherwise, that this just isn't true, that we are very much herding humans (whether by nature, nurture or both, ultimately it really doesn't matter) and that we are most certainly influenced by others. In fact I would go so far as to say that for the most part we do not enjoy freedom from the herd, just freedom to choose the herd we run and think with. The soothing self deception that we are stoic free thinking individuals, our psychological Achilles Heel if you will, is repeatedly and successfully leveraged against us by those who wish to manipulate and control. Very often it is not an outside force that blinds us, but rather an outside force that leverages our own blindness. This is why we must always question everything, beginning with ourselves. It is our own (mis)perception and worldview that is being manipulated, which often leads to our own blind and unquestioning support of policies, positions and laws that are entirely contrary to our own self interest or the collective (herds) good. We often blame the herding rat race for our own lot in life (either on a micro or macro level) confidently declaring that 'they' are the problem so we are exempt from blame and responsibility. Then we do next to nothing to change our own circumstances, claiming it's futile to even try because 'they' block the way forward towards significant and lasting personal and social change. After successfully doing nothing we proudly take the softer easier highway to hell, a path that is conveniently laid out and paved by our controllers. Then we sit back smug as a bug in our self righteous indignation when anyone dares to place the blame back at the source of our own servitude. Our controllers love that we don't even try to pick up the cognitive tools that lie scattered at our feet, let alone use them to defend and empower us. Hands down the most powerful weapon in the world used repeatedly against us is ourselves. Blunt force trauma by self (and group) is extremely effective when self (and group) corralling. Certainty breeds contempt of our self At times I struggle to remind myself that the more certain I am of something the greater the likelihood that I'm wrong, if for no other reason than that my absolute certainty most definitely closes my mind to alternative possibilities no matter how obvious they may appear to others. Not recognizing or even considering the possibility that I might be wrong feeds my confirmation bias and rewards my circular thinking with another shot of delicious cognitive dissonance soothing endorphins. Do not underestimate the power of this positive feedback loop for it claims all of us at one time or another, particularly when we confidently claim that it is not now doing so. Our critical thinking is often the weakest precisely when we believe it to be the strongest. For the vast majority of us a new thought trail is blazed one cautious step at a time despite our egotistic self delusions that we bravely and willingly go where we've never cognitively gone before. And for the most part we all color well within the socially correct lines with very rare and short lived deviations beyond the border and into the cognitive badlands. Thus the reason for my venturing outside conventional contrary thinking and into what at first blush might appear to be the mainstream meme. Rigid beliefs and preordained conclusions must never dictate the (self) discovery process or the intent of that process. Despite egoic protestations to the contrary it is downright frightening to venture outside the comfortable confines and safety of the consensus herd's artificial reality, thus one of the reasons we keep tripping over our own (and other's) cognitive dissonance. Once off the reservation we tend to huddle with other similarly off-the-beaten-track explorers, a perfect example being our affinity for Zero Hedge and its own equally artificial reality. The only thing better than being right when we know everyone else is wrong is cahooting with others who validate our beliefs. You scratch my confirmation bias and I'll scratch yours. If we are unwilling to travel in new perceptual directions, even if we can conceive of no readily apparent benefit and especially if we feel emotional pain while doing so and quickly back off, then all we ever manage to do is endlessly cover the same well marked territory regardless of its perceived (validating) distance from the majority consensus. Just because our intellectual hunting grounds may lie outside the mainstream meme doesn't mean we are immune to our own brand of rutted rigid thinking and herd mentality. In fact we often justify our own rote thinking by pointing to our contrary stance as proof we are flexible and thorough in our self examination.
Self inflicted mind control One man's collapse is another man's crumble, two seemingly divergent points of view formed in large part by very different perspectives as to the meaning of both terms as well as the active ingredients propelling the use of those terms within our respective (mostly false) world views. While on the surface this may seem painfully obvious, very often we do not practice what we perceive and even less often do we perceive without self deceiving, without externally and internally self inflicted distortions and blurring. This is the art of mind control and false realty creation, to induce you and me to willingly create an alternatively perceived reality, often entirely within our own minds, thereby eliminating the need for messy 'reality' based rules, independent verification and basic fact checking. And for the most part we do this in response to manipulated external stimuli which is often in direct conflict with our true inner knowing. The key to this manipulation is to convince all of us that it is in our best interest to ignore our better judgment, our inner voice of caution and prudence, and willingly surrender our personal sovereignty to a false external authority while rejecting our genuine inner sovereign authority. I say all of us because to some degree or another and at one time or another we have all done so, usually with plenty of excuses, rationalizations and justifications for doing so safely tucked away in our back pockets. We surrendered our personal sovereignty long before we were ever threatened with concocted external 'terrorist' threats when we consciously decided to ignore the obvious early warning signs of an increasingly out of control and hijacked government and instead pursued our own ideology, financial self interest and assorted pleasures. Unfortunately very few of us will admit this, thereby keeping us locked in our own vicious circle of denial and dependence. We rationalize(d) it all away by saying that at least we aren't as bad as 'those guys over there', when 'they' are saying the exact same thing about us. Or worse, we utter the entirely self absorbed and narcissistic declaration that "It's not my problem" or "I didn't vote for that guy so….." The litany of excuses given for our inaction, both for internal and external issues, is endless. Within this skewed alternative reality state of mind, where we stand depends entirely upon where we sit, and where we sit nearly always depends upon our financial, emotional and psychological self deceptions as well as our strategically selected denials and raging co-dependencies. Essentially we achieve a perpetual infantile state of mind in return for transient material comforts and a false sense of security, security that could quickly and easily be achieved if only we were to (re)connect with our own personal sovereignty. Like a dog endlessly chasing its tail, we can never practice true freedom of thought and being while deeply dependent upon and fully immersed within someone else's version of reality, particularly when it is self induced. Yet after a sufficiently long enough period of time of sustained conditioning within our mentally confined cognitive box (achieved for the most part during our state sponsored education and in concert with the willing assistance of our loving parents who passed on their own cognitive conditioning) we find it nearly impossible to conceive of a life of true freedom (that of a practicing personal sovereign) without our deeply embedded co-dependencies and ingrained notions of how the world works, thereby completing the circular co-opting of our inner spiritual and sovereign being. Freedom to choose………slavery The brilliance behind our so-called (illusionary) freedom (of choice) is that we almost always consciously choose our own enslavement. The genius lay in never forcing us to make one large and final decision in favor of enslavement. "Sure, I'll be a slave for life. Are there any fringe benefits?" The socioeconomic control system helpfully breaks the decision making process down into tiny little bite sized bits of slippery slope while sweetening the gruel with flashing lights and artificial colors, tastes and textures. "OMG, it's the iPad mini in white and silver with a ruby red cover. Can I charge it?" And when we do willingly choose enslavement we almost always make the choice based upon our own personally customized reasons that helpfully mesh with our mostly programmed pursuits and interests (reasons that just happen to be wonderfully aligned with the control systems' own agenda) in the same way a cattle shoot funnels the willing cattle to their own personal date with slaughterhouse destiny. I don't need to list them because there are hundreds of millions of them, several hundred of which I have personally used myself. Regardless of whether these thousands of tiny little micro decisions appeal to our ego, vanity, sense of self worth, hidden inner fears or unsated (mostly externally manufactured) hopes and dreams (just review Maslow's hierarchy of needs for a more complete list) and even if the decision is made by default, meaning we make no decision other than to stay with the status quo, the deed is still done. The ultimate Catch 22 is the cognitive catch you never fully recognize, but still willingly embrace. Where is John Yossarian when you need him? Our 'willing' participation within the present paradigm only serves to strengthen the cognitive binds that tie us to our internal and external dependencies. It matters not if it is an agnostic, mindless, resentful or even hostile participation, just that we all march to the same narrow range of emotional and spiritual frequencies. And it really doesn't matter if we are fully or partially aware of our dependencies nor that we might strenuously object to them, only that we participate in order to enable this powerful form of consent. Our slavery is always hidden in plain sight under layer after layer of willing consent, regardless if most of it is coerced with threats of state violence.
Socioeconomically addicted To directly oppose this addictive material compulsion (whether by force of mind or body) only serves to nourish and strengthen it simply because it is cognitively and spiritually designed to absorb our misdirected emotional and physical energy by using it to feed other parts of the whole in the same manner someone who is addicted to drugs or alcohol fails to secure his or her release from the addiction by way of denial or brute opposing mental force. Ask any long term recovering drug addict or alcoholic (to name just two examples of deeply embedded co-dependencies) if they were able to free themselves from their addiction by just saying NO (and really meaning it this time) and their responses will be overwhelmingly negative. The consumed active addict simply refuses to acknowledge that they can no longer participate in their obsessive activity. Their battle is always to limit the addiction and never to admit defeat in their ability to control their addiction. Always they wish to bargain and always they lose more ground to the addiction. If asked, the intelligence services might call this socioeconomic addict a 'compromised person'. At first glance this appears to be a huge contradiction since how can you 'control' something by admitting defeat. The key is not to (even try to) control, but simply to disarm and disempower that which is controlling us. This allows the addicted to move beyond this seemingly impenetrable roadblock rather than meeting it head-on. The fight is always with us and within us, not externally where the illusion makes it appear to be, and the way to personal and spiritual release is not to fight, not even to try to 'win'. Our ego simply refuses to recognize that we are physically and mentally consumed and spiritually broken. The longer the battle for control rages the more consumed the ego becomes in winning a battle that only exists within and can never be won and only be lost. The solution is to accept completely and unquestioningly that the battle can never be won, then turn in an entirely different direction and begin to do those things we never would have done before because we were consumed with pounding on the closed door of addiction directly in front of us and oblivious to the dozens of open doors all around. By opposing the addictive force directly the addicted is hopelessly consumed by himself, by his mental, emotional and spiritual defects. His directed energy, the force he applies when trying to break the addictive binds that tie, is mirrored and deflected back towards him, creating a situation where he is literally fighting with himself. Imagine a split personality pushing on both sides of an open door at the same time, one trying to force it closed while the other tries to push it open. Any increase in force from either side is immediately met with an equal and opposite force from the other. The only way to 'win' is not to play at all, to circumvent any notion what-so-ever of winning or losing and just walk away. Clearly this is easier said than done and thus exactly why the socioeconomic addict remains consumed and compromised. This process describes very well the convoluted and conflicted mind of the severely socioeconomically co-dependent addict and it applies both externally in the 'real' world as well as internally, within our controlled and manipulated minds. To ignore this dynamic is to be totally controlled by it, the ultimate fulcrum that is leveraged against us by external mind control forces. The Trojan horse money meme The all consuming fear based economic mind control money meme of (among other things) contrived scarcity is the Trojan horse that gains entry to our mind and spirit and it is something we for the most part willingly embrace even while denouncing certain select portions of it as 'the' problem. We are simply unwilling to look critically at the entire money meme, at the artificial and contrived scarcity of many resources which is designed to demand of us that we 'pay' (our masters) just so that we may continue to exist. We do not wish to look too deeply into the fundamental flaws of this system, of our willing and complicit bondage, because that might entail leaving it all behind once we recognize its true nature. This is our root addiction and one we are loath to abandon because that would entail embracing true freedom, not just freedom of choice. We have allowed ourselves to become institutionalized, sated fat rats that are more than willing to run the maze each day for our daily keep. We are a slave nation and rapidly becoming a slave Earth. Like the (completely) consumed drug addict or alcoholic, we are desperate to control the money meme's hold on us so that we can still partake of certain select (believed) 'good' components rather than to admit total defeat and begin to do those things we really don't wish to do, to first look within and recognize who and what we are, and then to act upon those discoveries. We convince ourselves that if only this component was removed or that participant was properly controlled or regulated that the socioeconomic system would function properly. This is the big lie. The money meme itself is designed to mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically enslave you and me while enriching and empowering a select few regardless of how well we think it can work if only we ousted the rogue elements, an excuse which is itself a colossal self deception. Explain to me again why we wish to salvage this? But of course logic and reason fall on deaf ears with the consumed compromised addict. This concept can be difficult to comprehend for a mind thoroughly immersed within the right-wrong, good-bad, left-right present day paradigm. Or worse, it is impossible to accept for a mind that perceives itself as not afflicted by the money meme mind virus at all, as above the sordid fray and immune to the collective madness. To some degree or another we are all specialists in our own psychological damage control. We are experts in blame, involvement and personal responsibility avoidance at all cost because……well, it's the other guy who's to blame, not me. Tell him to get his house in order, and then maybe I'll take a look at mine. The amount of energy we expend to rationalize away our own direct and indirect involvement, of our actual willing participation, would be truly staggering to measure if it weren't so sad to behold. I am constantly amazed how quickly we shed any personal blame whatsoever once we begin to gain some insight into the ugly underbelly of the mind control machine of the money meme. It seems as if once a portion of the manipulation is unearthed we become desperate to believe that now that the infection is somewhat visible to the naked eye, the virus is no longer infectious to us, as if our (limited) awareness somehow sterilizes the madness. It's the best of both worlds. At first we aren't affected when we are clueless because ignorance is bliss, then we become magically immune once we are (somewhat) aware of the illusion. Sadly these are the first, second and third orders of our addiction; the denial, then the denial of the denial, and finally the denial that there ever was any denial in the first place. "I don't know what you're talking about. I can clearly see what the issue is and it sure as hell ain't me. It's you and those idiots over there that's the problem, not me." Our distorted worldview Once we begin to peak beneath the surface layer we become so certain of our understanding of how the 'real' world works now (as opposed to how certain we were about how it worked before our revelation) that we rarely give it a second look, let alone devote any time to examine it critically. And why should we? Why venture too far down the rabbit hole when the next conveniently presented answer is right in front of us? The fact is that nowadays we are so completely bombarded with absurdity after absurdity on an exponentially increasing scale that we begin to lose all touch with common sense and reality…………including our own. Stay high or drunk on the money meme long enough and reality becomes so strange that it is to be avoided at all costs. Soon enough our warped sense of perception comes measured by our dependencies rather than despite them. This all too common state of emotional and intellectual paralysis might help to explain certain vows of poverty and abstinence practiced by tens of thousands of history's thinkers, philosophers and holy/spiritual men. One cannot see clearly while in the midst of the madness using only the cognitive tools and worldview assumptions supported and promoted by the madness. Simply put if we allow ourselves the conceit of believing that we are thinking outside the box without actually (destructively) testing our predispositions, all we're ever really doing is confirming for ourselves not only our imagined outlaw status, but our more perfectly conditioned and captured mental state. It is highly likely, absent a rigorous and continuous self examination, that we are blindly trapped within another smaller, though still thoroughly confined, psychological thought control box a la those fascinating little Russian nesting dolls. With this entirely self imposed cognitive impediment blocking our way forward (meaning our unwillingness to destructively test our own thinking) our only claim to fame might actually be that we are still somewhat closer to the core issues of our own self enslavement. Tragically, this slightly higher state of self awareness in no way mitigates the fact that we are still hopelessly mired within the muddy waters of the present day false reality paradigm. Chapter Two to follow shortly.
01-27-2013 Cognitive Dissonance |
| Kitco Shows Recent Plunge to Negative In Gold Lease Rates Posted: 27 Jan 2013 04:59 PM PST  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Gold & Silver: Its What the Charts Say, Not Fundamentals Or Opinion, and the Charts Say? Posted: 27 Jan 2013 04:40 PM PST *[B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B]"[B]Follow the [COLOR=#0000ff][U]munKNEE"[/U][/COLOR] [/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B]via twitter &[B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B] Facebook [/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B]or [B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B]Register [/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B]to receive our daily Intelligence Report All fundamentals and opinions are useless in the markets because they pertain to timing, and timing plays a huge role when investing/trading….[and only] put one's belief system into a context with regard to the market[s]….It does not matter what others say about the market; what matters is what the market says about others. The market is, and always will be, the final arbiter of all "facts" and "opinions." [This article give an update on exactly what the charts are currently saying about gold and silver.] Words: 914; Charts: 4 So ... |
| Warning for American silver investors RE: Monster boxes as poker chips – YouTube Posted: 27 Jan 2013 04:29 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Rick Rule – Mining Shares at Deep Discounts Now Posted: 27 Jan 2013 02:27 PM PST A Rick Rule Audio and Video Two-fer.Our good friend and savvy financier Rick Rule (Sprott Global) gets some KWN time and once again reminds gold mining shares investors to use their brains to overcome their emotions and realize that the entire mining sector is on sale – big time. Sales are good things, not bad things.
*** But wait, there's more! As in much more just below. Continued... While we are at it, we strongly suggest viewing the video of Rick Rule below from the just completed Cambridge House Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. Consider the KWN audio a warm up or appetizer with the Cambridge House video below the main course, dessert and coffee.
Rule's Rules"In a market where everyone else seems to be very depressed, I'm on my way to elated," Rick begins. "The thing that struck me, listening to the speakers today, and I have had the good fortune to listen to several, has been the overarching gloom in this conference. … But what I am here to say is that we are in the midst of a bear market, which from the point of view of those of you that would like to make money over the next five years, is an extremely good thing!" "If you employ adult supervision in this market you are going to make money. … If you invest intelligently in this market you are going to make money. And if past is prologue you aren't just going to make some money, you are going to make a lot of money. Think about how beaten up you feel now. Think about how you feel compared to 2010 (in a bull market) and understand that all of the people that you compete against in this market feel the same way. "What level of competition do you expect to find in your search for bargains in this market compared to 2010? None! You are involved in a race, a marathon. If you are my age and my weight, marathons are hard to run, but I can win if I am the only guy in the race. And I am almost the only guy in this race. .. Bear markets are good," Rule continued. 'Bears Beget Bulls' Rick recounts the previous bloody bears in the junior mining space, including the 1987-1990 bear that led to the "ferocious bull market" from 1992-1996; the wicked, nasty Bre-X and gold weakness inspired "truly dismal" 1997-2002 bear which morphed into the "scorching hot" 2003-2006 bull market; then the 2007-2008 "psychotic break" bear (which we have dubbed the first junior bear market from hell or BMFH1) that led to the spectacular 2009-2010 great recovery bull market . "Anybody see a pattern here," Rule asks rhetorically. "It is bear markets that set up bull markets. The extent of this bear market (2011-?) tells you something about the extent of the bull market that's going to follow," Rule declares. "This is the time to start being aggressive," Rule emphatically concludes. That is a rare declarative wide-ranging statement from a guy that normally avoids them. We could not agree more, and we also have the battle scars and feathers in our war bonnet we can show in solidarity with The Sprott Meister. That Cheshire Cat grin in the image at right perfectly captures the real-life attitude of the man. Confidence oozes from Rule like leaves falling from a maple tree in November. He has a great command of the English language and can turn a memorable phrase with the best of them. (Albertastan; America being an increasingly difficult place to be an American; Politics is from the Greek poli - meaning many - and ticks - meaning blood sucking insects; Fed printing should be called by another name, counterfeiting! et al.) But we hope Cali (his trusted right hand and personal assistant in the People's Republic of Californiastan) will apply some Adult Supervision and let Rick know that "begat" is the past tense version of the ancient verb "beget" before his next engagement! :))
Source: Cambridge House Conferences via YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=z4Y1ip7vmJU Edit to add a chart to show the bears beget bulls story. |
| HAS THE FIRST CURRENCY CRISIS BEGUN? Posted: 27 Jan 2013 02:06 PM PST As many of you who have read my work in the past know, I expect the eventual endgame to this whole Keynesian monetary experiment that has been going on ever since World War II, to finally terminate in a global currency crisis. I'm starting to wonder if we aren't seeing the first domino start to topple. I'm talking about the Japanese Yen of course. I think everyone just naturally assumes that the Yen is dropping in response to Prime Minister Abe's intent to imitate US policy and print its way out of its troubles. The problem with this strategy is of course, eventually Japan will break its currency. Japan is in a particularly tenuous situation in that their debt to GDP dwarfs most of the rest of the world. The only hope they have of servicing this debt is for interest rates to stay basically at zero. Any move by interest rates above this artificially low level and Japan's debt becomes unserviceable, without resorting to a greater and greater debasement of the currency. Unfortunately that will also result in an acceleration of the collapse of the currency, which would just cause Japanese bonds to be sold even more aggressively -a nasty catch-22 situation. At this point there is no way out for Japan. The only question is when will the endgame arrive. Japanese bond bears have been asking themselves that question for almost 2 decades. The recent move in the Yen has started me wondering if that end game hasn't now begun. In the chart below I have marked the successive yearly cycle lows with blue arrows. As you can see this major cycle bottom tends to arrive between March and May most years. If the 2013 yearly cycle low arrives in the normal timing band, then there may be a big problem developing with the Japanese currency. The reason I say that is because the Japanese Yen is basically already in free fall and we may still have another one-three months to go before a final bottom.  Another warning sign is the fact that this decline cut through not only the 2012 yearly cycle low, but also the 2011 yearly cycle low and never even blinked. In an orderly decline both of these levels should have generated at least a decent bear market rally. In my opinion, it's very worrisome that the Yen didn't even slow down as it moved through these major support levels.  The next major support level is at the 2010 yearly cycle pivot. If the Yen slices through this support level also, then I think we have a major currency crisis on our hands.  Needless to say if the world sees a major currency collapse, which up to this point I think most people would consider to be an absurd idea, it's going to spark a panic for protection. Despite stocks entering the euphoria stage of this bull market, stocks are not going to protect one from a currency crisis. Only hard assets will do that, and the two hard assets that are best at protecting one's wealth are gold and silver. Wouldn't it be fitting that at a time when gold and silver are about to be most cherished, they are now completely loathed by the market? $10.00 one week trial subscription       This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Rosen - 2 Key Charts & The Big Picture For Gold & Silver Posted: 27 Jan 2013 01:33 PM PST  Today 56-year market veteran and analyst Ron Rosen sent King World News exclusively two outstanding charts and commentary for our global readers. This will give KWN readers an important snapshot of of the big picture going forward for gold and silver.This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Corn - Smart Money Putting On Short-Squeeze Clinic Posted: 27 Jan 2013 01:18 PM PST While most eyes remain fixed on gold and silver, and the stock market, to a lesser extent, the Fed having driven the little investor away, we take a fresh look at the corn market. Read More...  |
| DO YOU BELIEVE SHILLS OR SHILLER? Posted: 27 Jan 2013 01:05 PM PST When it comes to housing, should you believe the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Home Builders, Jim Cramer, Wall Street shills, bloggers who do nothing but extrapolate current trends, or the man who warned the public about the Internet bust and the housing bust before they occurred? Robert Shiller is a thoughtful man. He is a skeptical man. He basis his conclusions upon historical data. The Wall Street planned artificially manipulated housing inventory "shortage" has resulted in a temporary increase in prices. As the recession gets deeper in 2013, this fake recovery will be revealed. Shiller is properly skeptical. A New Housing Boom? Don't Count on ItBy ROBERT J. SHILLERWE'RE beginning to hear noises that we've reached a major turning point in the housing market — and that, with interest rates so low, this is a rare opportunity to buy. But are such observations on target? It would be comforting if they were. Yet the unfortunate truth is that the tea leaves don't clearly suggest any particular path for prices, either up or down. On the one hand, there were sharp price increases in 2012, with the S.&P./Case-Shiller 20-City Index, which I helped devise, up a total of 9 percent over the six months from March to September. That comes after what was generally a decline in prices for five consecutive years. And while prices dropped very slightly in October, the trend was quite encouraging for the market. (Our November data come out on Tuesday.) But some of these changes were seasonal. Home prices have tended to rise every midyear and to fall slightly every fall and winter. And for some unknown reason, seasonal effects have become more pronounced since the financial crisis. After screening out these effects, a number of indicators are up, including data for housing starts and permits as well as the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Index of traffic of prospective homebuyers, which has made a spectacular rebound since last spring. What might explain this picture? It's hard to pin down, because nothing drastically different occurred in the economy from March to September. Yes, there was economic improvement: the unemployment rate, for example, dropped to 7.8 percent from 8.2 percent. But that extended a trend in place since 2009. There was also a decline in foreclosure activity, but for the most part that is also a continuing trend, as reported by RealtyTrac. And, last spring, along with Karl Case of Wellesley College and Anne Thompson of McGraw-Hill Construction, I conducted a detailed survey of the attitudes of recent home buyers in four American cities, as I discussed here in October. We did not see any evidence of increased optimism. In short, it is hard to find an exact cause for the rebound in home prices. But that isn't unusual — we hardly ever know the real causes of major changes in speculative prices. Yet we do know that any short-run increase in inflation-adjusted home prices has been virtually worthless as an indicator of where home prices will be going over the next five or more years. THERE is a good deal of short-run momentum in home prices — they tend to keep going in the same direction for a year or maybe more. But those prices have generally reverted to the mean fairly quickly, in inflation-corrected terms. The upswing in home prices from 1997 to 2006 — up 86 percent, in real terms — was an anomaly. And that upswing was almost completely reversed by 2012. We certainly can't rule out another boom. It's possible that the 20th-century pattern of real home prices, which typically hugged the historical mean, has disappeared. Perhaps people are more speculative in their thinking, after the recent roller-coaster ride, and more prepared psychologically to buy into a bubble. But I wouldn't put any money on that. History doesn't suggest that another big bubble will come so fast. In fact, before the most recent one, the United States had had only one major national home price boom in the last century, when real prices rose a total of 68 percent from 1942 to 1953. After the traumatic collapse of the last price bubble, Americans seem less sanguine about owning versus renting. According to the Census Bureau, the homeownership rate has been falling, from 69.0 percent in the third quarter of 2006 to 65.5 percent in the third quarter last year. A study of the causes of these rate movements, by Stuart Gabriel of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Stuart Rosenthal of Syracuse University, concluded that further declines seem likely, but that a forecast would depend "on uncertain forecasts of attitudes toward investing in homeownership as well as changes in credit market and other economic conditions." (The study was presented at the January meetings of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association/American Economic Association.) If the trend continues, it would suggest long-term declines in prices of existing detached single-family homes, because they are costly to manage as rentals. The housing market has also been subject to new oversight, including that of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which just this month announced new ability-to-repay standards for mortgage lenders. Those standards will make wild lending harder to do. So it seems that since 2006, our society — including both buyers and lenders — hasn't become more speculative in its attitudes toward housing. Instead, it has become more wary, and more regulated. And, of course, economic clouds are still hovering. Slow overall growth continues in the United States, and European financial markets remain vulnerable.Much of our economy, notably housing, is still supported by taxpayer bailouts, which are clearly not a long-term solution. There are also lingering uncertainties about emerging-market economies, as well as the risk that a disturbance in the Middle East could cause an energy crisis. Most experts are not predicting any big change in home prices. As of December, the Zillow-Pulsenomics Home Price Expectations Survey, which involves more than 100 forecasters, and the S.& P. Case/Shiller Composite Index Futures were both forecasting modest increases for the next half-decade, implying inflation-adjusted price growth of 1 to 2 percent a year. The bottom line for potential home buyers or sellers is probably this: Don't do anything dramatic or difficult. There is too much uncertainty to justify any aggressive speculative moves right now. If you have personal reasons for getting into or out of the housing market, go ahead. Otherwise, don't stay up worrying about home prices any more than you do about stock prices. I can't offer any clearer picture, and I don't see a solid basis for anyone else to do so, either. Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale. |
| Posted: 27 Jan 2013 12:55 PM PST Jim Sinclair's Commentary I wish to close tonight with this important video. You need to defend yourselves from the popular Trojan Horse in gold. You need to defend yourselves against MSM black PR on gold. You need to defend yourself from the cheerleaders on financial TV that broadcast the MOPE of MSM. You need Continue reading In The News Today |
| Posted: 27 Jan 2013 12:50 PM PST Jim Sinclair's Commentary CIGA Matt has a neat way to start our Sunday.
Jim, Have you noticed there are golden stars on the European flag? They are not there based on art, but as a monetary message. CIGA Patrick Dear Iram, I do not write for paper gold speculators. They are Continue reading Jim's Mailbox |
| Patterns of Promise & Progress - Failure is an Option Posted: 27 Jan 2013 12:20 PM PST Patterns of Promise Last year in gold there wasa head and shoulders bottom widely advertised for gold. At the time, I made thefollowing observation: [COLOR=#0b5394]"A current fascination is the head andshoulders pattern in gold which is far from complete. One can be assured thatsince everybody and his brother have noted this potential pattern, a positiveresolution, if any, is a long way off." That pattern failed completely. [/COLOR] A smaller version of thispattern was suggested in November. This failed too along with countless otherpattern permutations during the year. Also, at various times, there were goldencrosses, Fibonacci ratios and various support zones thrown in for good measure.Why did they all fail or fall short of their advertised benefits? The answer is really quitesimple. When everybody knows of an important developing pattern, support zoneor forecast, they have already taken action on it. Who is left to buy? Patterns in Progress The current advertised pattern ... |
| How Can the U.S. Grow Its Way Out of Its Present Predicament? Here's How Posted: 27 Jan 2013 11:32 AM PST "Follow the munKNEE"via twitter & Facebook or Register to receive our daily Intelligence Report The Fed's plan B:
[Let me explain why that is obviously the case.] Words: 1298 So concludes Mike Whitney in edited excerpts from an article* originally posted on www.counterpunch.org entitled The Fed's Plan B.
Whitney goes on to say in further edited excerpts: "How do you solve a problem when you're running a 10% fiscal budget deficit? You are not going to get growth without private sector credit demand. The government's idea right now is that we're going to export our way out of this, and when I asked a senior member of the Obama administration last week how are we going to grow exports if we will not allow nominal wage deflation? He said, "We're going to kill the dollar." Kyle Bass interview…. Take a minute and consider the implications of the Fed's money printing operations in relation to the above quote by market analyst Kyle Bass. Can you see what's happening? The Fed is acting exactly as one would expect it to act given it's stated intention to increase inflation (currency debasement) while intensifying the class war at the same time. How is the Fed waging class war, you ask? Fed chairman Bernanke has been a big supporter of deficit reduction, which is code for slashing public spending. The recent "fiscal cliff" settlement raised taxes 2% immediately on working people by ending the payroll tax holiday….so all the worker bees (you and me) have less money to spend, which means that there's going to be less activity, higher unemployment and slower growth. This is what all the liberal economists have been warning about for over 3 years, that is, if the government withdraws its fiscal support for the economy by reducing the budget deficits too soon, the economy will slip back into recession. So what is the Fed doing to counter this slide and to create the illusion that nutcases who preached "austerity is good" were right? Well, the Fed is buying mortgage-backed securities, right? So the Fed is actually dabbling in fiscal policy, assuming a role that is supposed to be played by the Congress. Now, I realise that the buying of MBS doesn't precisely fit the definition of fiscal policy because the Fed doesn't collect taxes and redistribute the revenue but it sure doesn't fit the description of monetary policy either, now does it? The Fed is not setting rates to control the flow of credit into the system. No, the Fed is buying stuff; financial assets that provide credit to loan applicants who are purchasing hard assets. That ain't monetary policy, my friend. It is fiscal policy writ large. The Fed is currently:
In other words, the government is providing all the money and taking all the risk, while all the profits go to Wall Street. Let's review:
Do you see a pattern here? It's all for the banks, which is why Marx was correct when he referred to "political economy" because the economy doesn't operate according to free market principals. It is organized in a way that best achieves the objectives of the constituency that controls the levers of political power. Now guess which constituency controls those levels of political power presently? You guessed it; "the Wall Street banks". What effect is this going to have on policy? Well, to some extent we already know the answer to that question because–as we pointed out earlier–the policy is shaped to benefit the banks. Even so, an analogy may be helpful to better grasp what's going on. Let's say you have $5 million that you want to put into manufacturing. In fact, you have decided you want to open your own factory and produce widgets of one kind or another to sell to the public. Eventually, you whittle your options down to two choices; you will either produce a modern line of electric cars to reduce emissions and pave the way for new technologies or you will make hula hoops. So, what's it going to be? Fortunately, for you, the Fed announces a new program that will provide $45 billion per month "indefinitely" to manufacturers who provide low interest loans to people who want to buy hula hoops. "Yipee", you say. "I will abandon my plan to save the planet from poisonous greenhouse gases and make my fortune selling hula hoop bonds to the Fed instead." Isn't this what's happening? None of this has anything to do with lowering unemployment, strengthening the recovery or increasing growth. It's all just a way of funneling money to powerful constituents and one thing is certain: if the Fed creates the demand for a product (like MBS), then someone is going to fill that demand whether it helps the broader economy or not. If the Fed can buy mortgage bonds, then why can't they buy infrastructure bonds? What's the difference? The difference is that mortgage bonds boost profits for bankers, whereas infrastructure bonds merely provide jobs for people who need them. In other words, the difference is not between fiscal and monetary, but between the "haves" and the "have nots", which is the same as saying that the Fed's policies are based on class interests…That brings [us] back to our original comment by Kyle Bass, who wonders how the U.S. can grow its way out of its present predicament (big budget deficits and weak exports) without more "private sector credit demand"? [That's a] great question but you can see that Fed chairman Bernanke has already tipped his hand. The Fed is going to keep waving that "$45 billion per month" carrot in front of the banks until they rev-up the credit flywheel and create a new regime of toxic mortgages. (The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule on "Qualified Mortgage", which requires neither a down payment nor credit scores, makes this prospect even more likely.) Bernanke is playing the role that the repo market played before the Crash of '08, that is, the Fed is promising to buy all the complex bonds (MBS) the banks produce off balance sheet to keep money flowing to the banks. It's just like the free market, except there's nothing free about it. It's all fake and Bernanke doesn't care if you know it. $45 billion per month isn't chump change. It's enough to inflate housing prices, to employ more out-of-work construction workers, to grow the economy, and to save bank balance sheets that are deep in the red. At the same time, the Fed's ballooning balance sheet will put downward pressure on the dollar which will increase exports while lowering real-inflation adjusted wages. Like the man said, "We're going to kill the dollar." Conclusion This is the Fed's plan: Bail out the banks, transfer the banks bad bets onto its own balance sheet, hammer the greenback, slash wages (via inflation), boost exports, and pump as much money as possible into the unproductive, overbuilt black hole we call the U.S. housing market. Of course, President Obama could avoid all this nonsense and just launch a government-funded jobs program that would snap the economy out of its coma, increase demand, and turbo-charge GDP, but that would be way too easy – and probably bad for profits, too.
*http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/22/the-feds-plan-b/
Related Articles: 1. Health of U.S. Economy Depends on Who Wins Battle Between Political Desire & Economic Law Politicians foolishly believe they can bend the laws of nature. They are fools for trying. Sadly, the pain and suffering that will be incurred will be borne by the millions of citizens dependent on markets and the economy. The economy cannot recover without a complete cleansing of the excesses that have built up over the last half century plus. [This article spells out why that is the case.] Words: 710 2. What Recovery? Contradictions Between Reality & Political Claims Are Everywhere! There is no recovery, regardless of what the elite and their minions in the media want you to believe. The economy is sick. It was made so by the malpractice of government and will become even weaker as government continues to administer the poison that got us to this point. The political class's version of remedy is akin to the medical profession's practice of bloodletting. Neither does any good and both, carried to extreme, are fatal. [Let me explain more fully.] Words: 548 3. Crisis Phase Beginning: U.S. Economy to Go Into a Severe Recession By End of 2013! Here's Why We have been hearing a lot about escaping the fiscal cliff, but our problem isn't solved. The fixes to date have been partial and temporary. There are many painful decisions ahead. Based on recent research and my analysis of the situation, civilization is in the early stage of the Crisis phase (state breakdown) and the U.S. will most likely enter a severe recession by the end of 2013. [Below is my rationale.] Words: 2979; Charts: 8
|
| Gold & Silver: Its What the Charts Say, Not Fundamentals Or Opinion, and the Charts Say… Posted: 27 Jan 2013 11:18 AM PST "Follow the munKNEE" via twitter & Facebook or Register to receive our daily Intelligence Report All fundamentals and opinions are useless in the markets because they pertain to So says Michael Noonan (http://edgetraderplus.com) in edited excerpts from his latest article* entitled Gold And Silver – All Fundamentals/Opinions Are Useless.
Noonan goes on to say in further edited excerpts: The market is composed of all the known [and not so well-known] facts that affect supply and demand….yet, the price of both gold and silver are languishing in protracted trading ranges. So how valuable are the fundamentals or opinions about gold going to $5,000, or silver to $400, (pick your own number, as most undoubtedly have one) [Update: 51 Analysts Now Maintain that Gold is Going to $5,500 – $6,500/ozt. in 2015!]? For the past 18 months or so, the best information in the world, the strongest opinions held, have been "useless." Charts, (the market translated into a visual format), reflect the trading ranges, and current prices are just about dead center within them. The middle of a trading range is where the level of knowledge is at its lowest. It is a coin toss. Price can rally to the top of the range and still fail, or it can decline to the bottom of the range and fail to go lower. Flip a coin! Whatever your opinion of where the price of gold and/or silver should be, this is what the market is saying about your "belief/opinion:" The market is showing price to be in the middle of a lengthy trading range, [TR], and until the TR is broken, up or down, one is spinning wheels in between. Weekly Gold Chart Last week [These Charts Provide Detailed Insights Into Gold & Silver Price Activity], we showed how the clustering of closes could signify support and a rally, or a pause before continuing lower. The gold "rally" fizzled and has retraced back to the clustering. Will it continue to act as support, or fail? Not only is gold in the middle of the TR, it is also in the middle of a down channel. It is anyone's guess for now. Let us add that the fundamentals are incredibly bullish [Goldrunner Update: Gold, Silver & PM Stock Sentiment Sucks BUT the Fundamentals Are Off the Wall!], and within that context, we continue to advocate buying the physical at any price, and buying consistently…[but] regardless of the bullish context of the fundamentals, the market is saying, "Not right now." Until price rallies above $1,800 [Alf Field: Once $1,800 Is Taken Out Gold Will See a Vigorous Climb to $4,500 Area] it is not going [to] reach whatever future expectation one may have [because without] timing, any/all fundamental considerations are useless. For positioning one's self in the physical, now is the time. When gold/silver take off… it will be fast and furious with no looking back but that can be months, quarters, possibly year(s) away. Daily Gold Chart The daily chart comments below pretty much speak for themselves. Last week, we noted a long position on the strength of the wide range, strong close bar, 6th bar from the end. The recommendation did not lead to much profit, but profits were taken prior to the decline, based on developing market activity at the time. Weekly Silver Chart While silver is weaker, relative to gold, it is behaving relatively stronger of late. Note how the weekly close is higher/above the clustering of closes, where gold is right at the clustering location, (both still in the middle!). As with gold, now is the time to continue accumulating – stacking, as it were - silver at any price…. For as much as an argument can be made that price is holding reasonably well within the ongoing TR, the "fact" that silver failed to reach the upper channel line is a sign of weakness. Yet, unlike gold, the decline in silver held above the wide range, strong close bar where a long position was recommended. You can see the small range high at 32.50, 3rd bar from the end. It was the market's message telling us that demand was weak. The long position was liquidated profitably, before the decline set in. Love those messages! Where will the decline stop? We have no clue, nor do we, or you, need to guess. Instead, simply wait for developing market activity to indicate demand is overcoming supply. Why guess when the best source of information will make some kind of factual declaration?! Maybe price will hold potential support at the clustering of closes, maybe not. What is more important is that the existing TR is telling everyone to wait, for those inclined to heed the market's message. Even on a shorter time frame, within the TR, the market is STILL saying, price is not strong. Buy the physical, but not the futures.
Conclusion Fundamental context matters for what side one chooses. The message from the market matters the most for timing and implementing one's belief. That is a fact that has never changed and one that never will. Count on it! [Read: The Charts Tell ALL and THIS Is What They're Saying About Gold & Silver for 2013]
*http://edgetraderplus.com/market-commentaries/gold-and-silver-all-fundamentalsopinions-are-useless
Related Articles: 1. These Charts Provide Detailed Insights Into Gold & Silver Price Activity All known information is contained in the charts, and being able to read them is a distinct advantage. The best way to achieve that advantage is to learn to make distinctions contained in the charts from one day/week/month to the next and this article does just that for both gold and silver. [Take a look.] Words: 1375; Charts: 6 2. Goldrunner Update: Gold, Silver & PM Stock Sentiment Sucks BUT the Fundamentals Are Off the Wall! Sentiment in the precious metals sector is in the toilet yet the fundamentals for the sector are off the walls positive. That is not secret, but it is what creates huge market moves in the direction of the fundamentals. In fact, market management will never move price against the underlying fundamentals for too long a period of time. 3. Alf Field: Once $1,800 Is Taken Out Gold Will See a Vigorous Climb to $4,500 Area There is a high probability that the correction in the gold price that started in early October at $1797 has been completed. Once $1800 is taken out on the upside the gold chart will look tremendous. A beautiful "cup and handle" base would then provide strong support for a vigorous upward climb in the precious metal. At this stage there is no reason to abandon the rough target of $4500 for this coming upward wave. [Below is my analysis and some charts on the situation.] Words: 434; Charts: 2 4. The Charts Tell ALL and THIS Is What They're Saying About Gold & Silver for 2013 It is impossible not to read some source…touting the "fact" that the price of gold and silver will be…["$x", "$y", etc.] in the "coming months" or in the "next year or two," etc. The market, however, does not echo those…sentiments because that is exactly what they are, sentiments. When it comes to sentiments or opinions, regardless of how close to source or how well reasoned, the market does not care. The charts are all-knowing, and they present everything known about the price, sans any opinion(s). Just deal with the facts and plan accordingly. Trust the markets – they never lie – [and this is what they are saying about the price of gold and silver in 2013]. Words: 1889; Charts: 6 5. Update: 51 Analysts Now Maintain that Gold is Going to $5,500 – $6,500/ozt. in 2015!
|
| Join GATA at the California Resource Investment Conference on Feb. 24-25 Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:58 AM PST 12:56p ET Sunday, January 27, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: People longing for a break from the bitter cold may especially enjoy Cambridge House's California Resources Investment Conference next month, to be held Saturday and Sunday, February 23 and 24, at the Hyatt Regency Indian Wells Resort and Spa in Indian Wells, California, just down the road from Palm Springs. In addition to GATA Chairman Bill Murphy and your secretary/treasurer, speakers will include GATA favorites Frank Holmes of U.S. Global Investors, Rick Rule of Sprott Global Resource Investments, David Morgan of Silver-Investor.com, and Al Korelin of the Korelin Economics Report. Dozens of resource companies will be exhibiting. The Hyatt Regency has an outstanding golf course and a great restaurant and is located near many other great restaurants if just sitting around warm and dry on the hotel bar's delightful patio isn't wonderful enough for northerners. Admission to the conference is free for those who register in advance. But the conference also is offering a golf tournament and gala reception for $180. With golf club rentals, the charge for the tournament and reception will be $245. To learn more about the conference and to register, please visit its Internet site here: http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/california-resource-investment-confe... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT How to profit in the new year with silver -- Future Money Trends is offering a special 16-page silver report with our forecast for 2013 that includes profiles of nine companies and technical analysis of their stock performance. Six of the companies have market capitalizations of less than $800 million and one company has a market cap of only $30 million. The most exciting of these companies will begin production in a few weeks and has a market cap of just $150 million. Half of all proceeds from the sale of this report will be donated to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts exposing manipulation and fraud in the gold and silver markets. To learn about this report, please visit: http://www.futuremoneytrends.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=376&tmp... Join GATA here: California Resource Investment Conference * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT GoldMoney adds Singapore vaulting option In addition to its precious metals storage facilities in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Toronto, and the United Kingdom, now with GoldMoney you can store gold and silver in Singapore in a high-security vault operated by Brink's Singapore Pte Limited. To celebrate the launch of this storage option, GoldMoney is offering a discount on buy and exchange fees at this vault for any orders above US$10,000 (or the equivalent) until January 31, 2013. Tthe gold buy rate is 0.98%, while the silver rate is 1.99%. Metal exchanges into Brink's Singapore will also be discounted for this period and will be charged at 0.78% for gold and 1.75% for silver. Simply place your order online and the above rates apply automatically until January 31, 2013, 15.00 UK time. To find out more about the new vault, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/singapore?gmrefcode=gata GoldMoney customers can take delivery of any number of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bars from any GoldMoney vault, as well as personally collect their bars stored in the Hong Kong, Switzerland, and U.K. vaults. It's easy to open an account, add funds, and liquidate your investment. For more information, visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata |
| Rick Rule About Junior & Exploration Miners: The Sector Is A Disaster Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:53 AM PST Among the most successful resource investors is undoubtedly Rick Rule. During an interview, earlier this week, he talked with Resource Investing News about the prospects of the junior and exploration resource market. He believes that the bottom has not been reached yet. If you would merge all junior mining companies into one company (Junior Explore Company), you would lose $2 billion per year, explained Rick Rule. "The sector as a whole is a disaster," is his current view.
This view is not very promising, especially in a time when the gold and silver miners struggle to keep their stock valuations. After the spectacular run-up between 2002 and 2006, and a significant rally after the financial crash of 2008, the gold shares have been clueless. Looking at the junior miners, the following chart shows how the GDXJ stands even lower than three years ago in spite of a gold price that stands some 60% higher. Given the difficult state of the sector, especially the junior and exploration miners, it is interesting to know that Rick Rule his research framework to find the winners is based on the "Prospect Generator Model." The model is based on the fact that the exploration business is at its core high-tech, high-IQ research and development oriented. The companies are not asset-intensive but rather intellectual capital businesses. For investors, this all boils down to risk management, as explained in a brilliant way by Rick Rule with the following quote.
The tip for investors is to look for exploration and junior companies that do a lot of joint ventures. Companies that rely on other juniors or major mining companies to do their prospect generation run a lower risk than the ones that are funding their own exploration. The mid-tier and senior segments are currently not performing slightly better than the juniors, but the disconnect with the gold price is comparable. Casey Research just released their view on that disconnect. They point to the disbelief by the institutional world in permanently higher gold prices and expectations of rising input costs (for instance oil).
Casey Research expects much higher prices in the future especially for producing miners. For now, as the institutional world does not see higher gold prices, no official role of gold in the monetary system, bonds as a safe place for money, controlled inflation, their interest in the sector seems very fragmented and not a catalyst. |
| Japanese Yen: Lower Short-Term, But Higher Longer-Term Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:48 AM PST Japan is in a recession, and the Japanese yen lost 15% from the highs against the U.S. dollar. The decline should continue this year as well. The potential target could be 104 in the futures prices. However, the longer-term picture supports ... Read More...  |
| Psss, Its Not Going To Be Different This Time Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:43 AM PST First, markets act like fishing rods. They go up nice and smooth and collapse in a straight line. Second. Major stock indexes rally into the recession. Everything is happy, then very quickly the whole world is falling apart. Read More...  |
| Gold And Silver - All Fundamentals/Opinions Are Useless Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:37 AM PST There is truth to the consideration that all fundamentals and opinions are useless in the markets, as they pertain to timing, and timing plays a huge role when investing/trading. What fundamentals/opinions do is put one's belief ... Read More...  |
| The Fed’s Plan B - "We're Going to Kill the Dollar" Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:37 AM PST How do you solve a problem when you’re running a 10% fiscal budget deficit? You are not going to get growth without private sector credit demand. The government’s idea right now is that we’re going to export our way out of this, and when I asked a senior member of the Obama administration last week how are we going to grow exports if we will not allow nominal wage deflation? He said, “We’re going to kill the dollar.” Kyle Bass interview. |
| Ignore Wall Street Cheerleaders: Market Technicals, Fundamentals & Other Info Says Otherwise! Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:32 AM PST "Follow the munKNEE" via twitter & Facebook or Register to receive our daily Intelligence Report [In spite of what] the typical Wall Street cheerleaders, I mean strategists, So writes Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT (www.thedailygold.com) in edited excerpts from his original article* entitled Equities, Miners and Commodities are Nearing Major Turning Points.
Roy-Byrne goes on to say in further edited excerpts: The decoupling or negative correlation between the equity market and mining equities, as the miners take a hard turn lower and the S&P 500 continues higher, continues to play out. At the same time, commodity prices have been in a cyclical bear and have struggled to gain traction. Our forecast for 2013 is for these cyclical trends to shift. It won't happen instantly but it will slowly evolve in the coming months and quarters. Today, we see that the equity market is ever more closer to that cyclical top, miners are about to retest a major bottom and hard assets have a new catalyst. The Miners are Headed Down First let us take a look at the miners. From top to bottom we plot GDX, GDXJ (larger juniors) and SIL (silver miners). It doesn't take a technician to see where these markets are headed in the coming days. GDX will test $40, GDXJ will test $17 and SIL will test $19.50 and perhaps $17. The S&P 500 Faces Strong Headwinds As we pen this, the S&P 500 is trading at 1501 and faces very strong 13-year resistance at 1550 as well as the all-time high at 1576. Look at the chart below. Does this look like a market you want to buy? How in the world will the market break past 13-year resistance, much less even sustain a breakout move after a four-year rally? Nevertheless, the typical Wall Street cheerleaders, I mean strategists, are predicting the usual 10-15% advance and are justifying that with the belief that the economy will strengthen and valuations will pick up. I guess they forgot that margins are at record highs and therefore corporate earnings have likely peaked. At the same time, the typical trader has hopped on board the trend yet can't rationalize his long position beyond the idea that "it's going up." I guess they forgot about the ominous economic headwinds, stagnant earnings and the blatantly obvious massive resistance at 1550. Manager Sentiment Argues Caution Beyond the technicals, one should see that sentiment is arguing for caution. Below is the NAAIM survey of manager sentiment. This data results from money in the market and not opinion. At 86, the NAAIM survey is only points away from a five-year high. Rydex Money Market Near Excessive Optimisn Line Next, we show the amount of Rydex assets in their money market fund relative to all of their funds. The current figure is dangerously close to the excessive optimism line. AAII Bullish Sentiment at 2-year High The latest survey from the American Association of Individual Investors showed bullish sentiment at a two-year high. It made its largest weekly jump in the past 19 months. VIX at Post-recession Low & Junk Bonds at All-time Highs The VIX is now at post-recession lows and junk bonds are at all time highs. CCI and Asset Managers' Commodities Weighting Out of Balance Meanwhile, commodities (which includes precious metals) have been in a cyclical bear market for 23 months! The CCI may have bottomed last June but we won't know for certain for a while. Tiho Brkan's chart below shows the CCI and the weighting of asset managers surveyed in the Merrill Lynch fund manager's survey. At present, we see that a net 2% of managers are underweight commodities. Compare that to 2009-2011 when 30% of managers were routinely overweight the sector. Adjusted Monetary Base at All-time High On the fundamental side, note [in the chart below] that after a nearly two-year consolidation, the adjusted monetary base has broken out to a new all-time high….The Adjusted Monetary Base is the sum of currency in circulation outside Federal Reserve Banks and the U.S. Treasury, plus deposits held by depository institutions at Federal Reserve Banks. Summary Let's sum up the facts:
How is the above all a sign of a major new bull market in stocks? The bottom line is [that]:
Cyclical changes take months and perhaps quarters to complete. The key is to ignore the day to day noise and focus on long-term charts. We've been patient with the miners and have held an ample cash position ready to put to work. We plan to do so next week as the major lows are tested. Good Luck!
*http://thedailygold.com/equities-miners-and-commodities-are-nearing-major-turning-points/(Written by: Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT; Copyright © 2013 The Daily Gold; Subscribe to our Premium newsletter if you are interested in professional guidance in uncovering the producers and explorers poised for big gains.)
Related Articles: 1. World Economy & Market Forecast: More Sunshine & Less Stormy Weather Ahead It seems clear that there are a number of investors who have gained confidence in the global economy and are seeking to capture the growth opportunities taking place around the world. With the European crisis comfortably in the rear view mirror and global central banks taking the position that they will continue their easing policies, investors have taken their foot off the brake and have begun to accelerate….We see more sunshine and less stormy weather ahead [and explain why that is the case in this article]. Words: 695; Charts: 3 2. These Charts Provide Detailed Insights Into Gold & Silver Price Activity All known information is contained in the charts, and being able to read them is a distinct advantage. The best way to achieve that advantage is to learn to make distinctions contained in the charts from one day/week/month to the next and this article does just that for both gold and silver. [Take a look.] Words: 1375; Charts: 6 3. 5 Sound Reasons Investors Would Be Better Off On the Sidelines Than In the Market New year festivities have continued on the stock market even as the Christmas trees have been put away. The "death of the fiscal cliff," not horrible job numbers and supportive comments from Mario Draghi on the other side of the pond have led to bold and bullish behaviors over the last three weeks. While no one can predict the exact peak, here are five reasons you're better off on the sidelines than in the market. 4. 3 Reasons the Stock Market Could Rally & 3 Reasons to Be Cautious Near Term The U.S. stock market rally that kicked off the New Year continued last week, and after only two weeks, US stocks are up around 3% for the year. European stocks have posted similar gains and equities in Japan have advanced even further. What's behind this rally – and more importantly, can it continue? In my view, the rally can be attributed to three factors. Words: 615 5. The S&P 500 Continues to Rapidly Build Its "Domed House" As Projected The broad stock market is on its way to building a "Domed House" and to challenge multi-year highs, or even all-time highs, in the process. Based on the forecast of my proprietary Long Wave Index, the broad market should be in a short-term bullish time-window until 1/17/2013. Words: 634; Charts: 2 6. Dr. Faber and I Concur: There Are Major Reasons to be Very Cautious in 2013 – Here's What To Do Dr. Marc Faber, the author and publisher of the "Gloom Boom And Doom" report is one of the most well-read economists out there. I am of the opinion that his suggestions and investment advice are more realistic than any other economist or analyst we hear and read regularly. The summary of Dr. Faber's latest monthly report suggests that he views 2013 as a year of capital preservation. In other words, Dr. Faber is not very bullish on risky asset classes for 2013. This article discusses Dr. Faber's views and the reasons to remain cautious in 2013. Words: 1494; Charts: 3; Tables: 1 Without economic growth, and real economic growth at that, there can be no meaningful long-term economic recovery in the developed countries. Growth or lack thereof will have to be reflected in the financial markets over time. Currently, I continue to see a disconnect between where the financial markets are pricing things, and where I think they ought to be pricing things. Words: 784 |
| The Time is Now For All Gold Investors!!!! Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:31 AM PST There is a universal understanding that no major trend can exist without Major Institutions being 'in on' the trade. With the deepest pockets on Wall Street, these BIG BULLIES are also notorious for manipulating the ... Read More...  |
| Alasdair Macleod: Bank of England gold -- the doubts remain Posted: 27 Jan 2013 10:26 AM PST 12:20p ET Sunday, January 27, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: GoldMoney's Alasdair Macleod today deduces evidence that if central bank gold reserves are really intact, a primary custodian, the Bank of England, should be vaulting more gold than the 5,738 tonnes it reports. Macleod's commentary is headlined "Bank of England Gold: The Doubts Remain" and it's posted at GoldMoney's Internet site here: http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/alasdair-macleod/bank-of-england-... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Opinion Around the World Is Changing When Deutschebank calls gold "good money" and paper "bad money". ... http://www.gata.org/node/11765 When the president of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, pays tribute to gold as "a timeless classic". ... http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2012/09/24/signs-of-the-gold-stan... When a leading member of the policy committee of the People's Bank of China calls the gold standard "an excellent monetary system". ... http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2012/10/01/signs-of-the-gold-stan... When a CNN reporter writes in The China Post that the "gold commission" plank in the 2012 Republican platform will "reverberate around the world". ... http://www.thegoldstandardnow.org/key-blogs/1563-china-post-the-gop-gold... When the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy of the U.S. House of Representatives twice called on economist, historian, and gold standard advocate Lewis E. Lehrman to testify. ... World opinion is changing in favor of gold. How can you learn why and what it will mean to you? Read the newly updated and expanded edition of Lehrman's book, "The True Gold Standard." Financial journalist James Grant says of "The True Gold Standard": "If you have ever wondered how the world can get from here to there -- from the chaos of depreciating paper to a convertible currency worthy of our children and our grandchildren -- wonder no more. The answer, brilliantly expounded, is between these covers. America has long needed a modern Alexander Hamilton. In Lewis E. Lehrman she has finally found him." To buy a copy of "The True Gold Standard," please visit: http://www.thegoldstandardnow.com/publications/the-true-gold-standard Join GATA here: California Resource Investment Conference * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Fred Goldstein and Tim Murphy open All Pro Gold Longtime GATA supporters Fred Goldstein and Tim Murphy have brought their many years of experience in the precious metals and numismatic coins to All Pro Gold as metals brokers who specialize in the delivery of gold and silver bullion bars and coins as well as numismatic gold and silver coins. Fred and Tim follow these markets closely and are assisted by a team of consultants in monitoring market trends. All Pro Gold offers GATA supporters competitive pricing on all bullion products and welcomes inquiries. Tim can be reached at 602-299-2585 and Tim@allprogold.com, Fred at 602-799-8378 and Fred@allprogold.com. Ask about their ratio strategy and the relationship of generic $20 dollar gold pieces to 1-ounce gold bullion coins. Visit their Internet site at http://www.allprogold.com/. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Save Your ASSets First To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment