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.
A few weeks ago we noted that base metals were in a potentially bullish pattern and recently updated that status as near a break out. GYX is now breaking out of the pattern. Here is a weekly chart of the DBB base metals ETF.
Another old name from the go-go (bubble) days of tech. Previously we have highlighted BRCM (a successful trade) and more recently INTC. Here is another survivor from 2000.
NFTRH 296 noted “Platinum could get interesting if it breaks resistance”, which was shown by a weekly chart. I also noted that I was “jumping the gun” in buying PPLT before a would-be breakout in Platinum.
As the silver CoT report data systematically, almost robotically degraded into the September 2012 top (despite the seemingly bullish coming of QE3) NFTRH used to ask week after week “Who are those guys?” doing its best Butch Cassidy while evaluating the gathering short interest.
Below is the CoT graph from NFTRH 203 dated September 9, 2012. Week after week ‘those guys’ were ganging up on silver and we all know what soon happened; a harsh bear market down leg for the precious metals.
Gold-Silver Ratio
The gold-silver ratio is rising today, which is not a bad thing for gold stocks as long as it is rising in the context of gold out performing silver to the upside.
This article at Hard Assets Investor talks about Jeff Gunlach’s bullish gold call for 2014 and uses Dylan Grice’s 2012 call as an example of how the end of the world (i.e. gold’s safe haven value) can be put on hold indefinitely.
Is Jeff Gundlach’s Bullish Gold Call Too Early?
So is Gundlach wrong today? Grice wasn’t necessarily wrong in 2012. What he called “the largest credit inflation in financial history, a credit hyperinflation” has instead rolled on…taking asset prices higher and crushing interest rates. But it hasn’t, as yet, hit the value of money itself.
Nor will it hit the value of money, especially the US dollar, until all confidence is lost in the system. We are about a million miles away from that condition right now (see second chart below). Confidence will be lost first in the assets that are benefiting from the inflation – like stocks, so strategically at the heart of the wealth effect that policy makers are trying to stimulate – and then in policy makers themselves. Then we’d have a big bull market in gold for all to see.