The headlines are talking about markets being down on Fed rate policy fears due to employment cost increases, declining consumer confidence, Argentina this and European deflation that. In other words, the headlines are coming out with reasons why a market that was heavy to begin with is down hard a day after the Fed rolled over and committed to its ongoing inflation. They always need a story.
Sorry, I could not resist the title. Gary Shilling, an economist whose name I have heard over the years, has quite a body of work often revolving around Fed policy, GDP and deflation. The reason I looked into Mr. Shilling is an email from an NFTRH subscriber linking his thoughts on a coming boom…
The Boom is Coming, and Sooner Than You Think (July 18, 2014)
Okay, an economist and Bloomberg columnist thinks this is a boom (actually it is; we are after all in the age of Inflation onDemand © and a Boom/Bust cycle; currently in a cyclical boom concentrated in stocks). Let’s see what he thinks…
A slightly abbreviated Key ETF segment due to ongoing time commitments over the mid summer weeks. Just a snapshot in time, picking up where we last left these charts a few weeks ago…
[ed: Excerpted from NFTRH 301’s opening segment. Those looking for paint by numbers directions and casino game instructions (talking to readers at a certain site that may or may not re-publish this article) feel free to just skip the article. You will not get what you are looking for. The balance of NFTRH 301 did the nuts and bolts technical work on the relevant US and global markets, precious metals, currencies, etc.]
[edit 2] Based on reader feedback from another site, it appears I do not understand inflation, nor that gold’s purchasing power is superior to that of the USD over the long term. What I take from this is that if you post anything positive (like USD’s ‘price’ potential) about the buck and/or negative (like gold’s price vulnerabilities) about gold certain handbook carrying people in the gold ‘community’ are going to lash out first, and read/consider second. In other words SSDD.
Take a look around the gold bull landscape and tell me how many of them are featuring a chart like this, showing the US dollar in a bullish short-term stance (to go with the weekly bullish stance we have noted for so long in the ‘Currencies’ segment).
This is not to say that the US dollar has real value. How can it when it is hopelessly dragged down by a national debt-for-growth obsession. But as with gold, value is one thing and price is quite another. It is just that one (USD) receives a price bid due to a ‘nowhere else to hide’ sort of mentality by the majority when asset market liquidity becomes constrained and the other (Gold) receives a more solid value bid, over time.
Well they sure don’t make it easy to get a hard read on things in the very short-term, but one thing we should remember is that this correction is the last correction I expect before a consistent drive upward begins, assuming that either a hard rally or bull market are in the near future. That is due to the symmetry of the weekly bottoming pattern, which will be reviewed in this weekend’s report.
Finally, we have seen the obvious (what most people will now take note of) kickoff to a short-term correction in the precious metals. Depending on the fundamental picture, we can plan on taking advantage of a buying opportunity as we have been noting over last couple of weeks.
In light of the breakout in base metals (which I am still looking at as only a trade via DBB), and bottoming situations in other areas like Uranium (hat tip to subscriber ‘Hammer’) and the REE’s, it is time for a brief update on mineral commodities.
We have not checked in on this motley crew at the public site in a long time (NFTRH keeps a running tab each week). Here are the monthly views of the basket cases we call major currencies.
Uncle Buck and his reserve status were leveraged to the hilt by “The Hero” and now his successor is trying to gently talk the Fed out of its policy stance over time. In other words, tightening is going to come one way or another and Janet Yellen is trying to go the orderly route. When this process becomes disorderly, the USD is likely to benefit from the liquidations elsewhere in the asset world.
Technically, USD is in a long basing pattern. There are those who think it is basing before a renewed decline, reading a Symmetrical Triangle (continuation) pattern into poor old Unc. I think the odds are it is bottoming over the post-2008 years when inflation – try as they might to have promoted it – simply has not taken root *. Leaning bullish, watch support and resistance.
There is no denying the cautious tone of our updates about the gold stock sector this week. Sometimes they appear prescient and then there are other times, like today. Yesterday’s update stated:
A subscriber requested a view of the GDX for his personal management. So I thought I would throw it up here as an update. Today is bounce day (at RSI support), but GDX has not even retraced 38% of the rally. The 62% retrace at 24+ is the favored target for a decent correction that would flush some bugs.
Gold got blown up in 2 days with respect to the short-term rally. Watch for gold to bottom before silver as we likely transition into a phase of gold leadership over silver. Key support is from the 1300 down to 1270.
Gold stocks are in the resistance target zone, so understand that negative reactions are becoming more likely. But I want to make a point that unlike the hype surrounding Ukraine and Iraq (i.e. geopolitical problems) that we discount as a fundamental underpinning for the gold sector, the headlines now coming from Europe and in particular Portugal are an actual fundamental underpinning because they speak directly to what is wrong with the debt leveraged financial system and our reasons for owning gold and/or the miners.
A brief update to note HUI is now approaching the resistance level of 245 to 250 that we have been noting.
The following is an excerpt from NFTRH 298’s 38 pages of hard hitting, no b/s market analysis, which also included extensive work on the precious metals along with commodities, currencies, global markets and market sentiment.
NFTRH subscriber (7.6.14): “You should publish pages 15 and 16 of this weeks report. I would like to share it. It is a great summary of the current situation.” Pages 15 & 16 take it through the Dow chart below. I decided to go with the whole segment on US stocks.
Happy Independence Day America! Your markets are bullish… and over bought, over loved and running on increasing momentum.
The graph tells a story of the end of the Greenspan era’s commercial credit inflation, which was resolved in 2008, and the beginning of the Bernanke era and official credit inflation, which is ongoing.