A Look At The U.S. Stock Market Using Weekly Charts

With the help of some of NFTRH‘s standard weekly charts, we take a snapshot of the US stock market.

The Bank index is unbroken from a weekly perspective.  People will talk about an H&S but it is not activated until the trend channel and the neckline (a well defined support area) are broken.  BKX, along with the Semiconductors has been a notable leader to the entire surprise* phase of the bull market out of Q4, 2012.

bkx

A breakdown of support would break this cycle of the bull market (if this is a secular bull market as many experts think, then the bull would live again after the cycle completes).  It would probably be healthiest to the secular bull case for a breakdown to occur into a relatively small cyclical bear market. Continue reading "A Look At The U.S. Stock Market Using Weekly Charts"

Death of the Dollar? Gold an Inflation Hedge? Really?

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).

usd.daily

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.

We saw what happened when gold got the price bid as the panicked ‘Knee Jerks’ flooded in during the acute phase of the Euro crisis in 2011. That was the exclamation point on the first major phase of the gold bull market and the dawn of a cyclical bear market.

We continue to await economic contraction, in which the price of the USD can benefit for a while as capital comes out of assets and into what it thinks is a safe haven. Gold remember, has been soundly discredited as a store of value and that has been the bear market’s job… well done I might add. Continue reading "Death of the Dollar? Gold an Inflation Hedge? Really?"

The Real Price of Gold

The real price of gold, as adjusted by commodities is making some nice baby steps toward rebounding.  Here is a picture of the gold ETF vs. certain key commodity ETF’s and markets, that show the progress of what would be the most desirable condition (a rising real price) for a healthy gold bull.

gld.dbc

And then of course there are other notable measures like Gold vs. Stock Markets.  Here is the progress vs. SPY and EZU… Continue reading "The Real Price of Gold"

ZIRP Gains More Attention

We have been talking about how there had been no bubble in US stocks and how the economy is doing just fine.  We have also been talking about how the bubble is in policy and that the economy and stock bull market have been created – yes, like Frankenstein’s monster once again – out of this policy bubble.

Enter economist Joseph LaVorgna of Deutche Bank…  Fed needs to start raising rates, top forecaster says.

Will wonders never cease?  As you may know, I read the financial MSM to get a feel for what the casual market participant is reading, what the majority is being told is the truth.  Usually it is some combo of self-promoters and agenda (sometimes political) driven bulls and bears.

“The economy is improving much faster than the Fed is willing to acknowledge, LaVorgna said in an interview. At the current rate of hiring, more jobs will be created this year than in any year since 1999.”

Exactly, and still they inflate.  He correctly puts the focus on the financial (and national) disgrace called ZIRP as opposed to the theater surrounding QE’s long term bond purchases.

“In six months, the unemployment rate will be below 6% and the core inflation rate will be at 2%,” he said. “We are way ahead of schedule. We’re going to get to 5.2% or 5.4% a year ahead of schedule.”

“The Fed is behind the proverbial curve,” he said. “The Fed should be raising rates.”

It’s all that this corner of the interwebs has been hammering on for over a year now.  If the economy is at all real, get rid of QE and end ZIRP. Continue reading "ZIRP Gains More Attention"

US Treasury Bonds, Gold & Stock Market

The following is one of a wide range of analytical topics covered in NFTRH 293′s 35 pages this week, much of which is straight ahead technical analysis.  But the T Bond market is usually central to an overall macro view at any given time.  This segment is not meant to provide actionable direction (other than perhaps to prepare for a potential rise in T bonds yields), it is meant to dig into the mechanics beneath the financial markets in an effort to have people consider that there is much more going on with markets than simple nominal TA or conventional fundamental analysis (PE ratios, growth metrics, reported economic data, etc.) can account for.

US Treasury Bonds

10 & 30yr yields have declined to support as NFTRH projected

Yields on long-term Treasuries have continued to decline in line with our view that was contrary the 'Great Rotation' (out of bonds) hype. The [30-year] especially is now close to support and the next play seems like it could be rising yields and declining T bonds. Continue reading "US Treasury Bonds, Gold & Stock Market"