ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Over the past two days, I have crowed about silver, pondered whether gold will catch up, and marveled at the doubling in the S&P 500 from the March, 2009 lows. Yet, I failed to put the stories together into one chart for proper context: the S&P 500 priced in gold. Of course, almost every gold … Read more
Silver finally hit fresh highs on Thursday, and I am now forced to pull out “Plan B” on re-establishing a position in the precious metal. I had expected the “cooling off” period to end with a retest of the 200-day moving average (DMA) and an opportunity to scale back into silver at my own, leisurely … Read more
Coffee prices have soared along with most other commodities over the past year and more. For example, the iPath Dow Jones-UBS Coffee Total Return Sub-Index ETN (aka JO) is up 70% since the end of 2009. The last earnings results from Starbucks (SBUX) demonstrated the stress from these higher coffee prices. The company slightly lowered … Read more
I did not think the dollar would test the critical multi-year support line this soon. I thought the prospects for an economic recovery that is looking stronger than in competing developed economies would be sufficient to give the dollar a helping hand up despite the Federal Reserve’s best attempts to keep grinding the currency into … Read more
The “cooling off” of silver and gold has unfolded very slowly over several months. On Thursday, this process entered yet another phase. This time, silver made a clean and strong break below its 50-day moving average (DMA). Silver even made its first lower low since the latest rally began in late summer. Gold has spent … Read more
The massive and historic floods in Australia have driven coal prices up. This is particularly important for steel since Australia exports 2/3 of the world’s coal used for making steel (coking coal). Steelmakers have already been struggling with increasing input costs, so the Australian floods are sure to pinch profits further. At the close of … Read more
The cooling process for gold and silver has moved slowly and deliberately. The first step featured a fight through parabolic upswings, especially for silver. The next step finally seems underway with the first break of primary (short-term) uptrends. Gold closed below its 50-day moving average (DMA) for the first time since August. Silver closed below … Read more
Lately, it seems I have been pointing out more and more stocks in breakout formations. It makes the skeptic in me a little wary and nervous, but I will keep rolling with what works. And steel stocks have finally started working over the past month. I have to assume that the market is seeking out … Read more
Last week, I mentioned that I had not yet decided on my re-entry strategy for gold and silver. I remain in neutral as gold, silver, and the dollar index churn in various holding patterns (using GLD and SLV as proxies for gold and silver respectively). GLD is right where it was two months ago. SLV … Read more
The week ended with the S&P 500, SLV (a silver ETF), and GLD (a gold ETF) all approaching former 52-week highs. The U.S. dollar dropped 1.3% on Friday, decisively failing at resistance at its 200-day moving average (DMA) and putting an exclamation point on the week’s action. The S&P 500 broke through its last battle … Read more