Tag: Notes From The Rabbit Hole (NFTRH)

Metals Ratios Continue To Indicate Inflation

Posted on by Gary Tanashian

And that is welcome for monetary and fiscal policymakers of course since inflation is the only trick they have up their sleeve to bail this mess out once again. And this is no comment on COVID-19. The economy was slowly decelerating last year well before COVID-19 showed up.

The yield curve bottomed and turned up in August of 2019 as manufacturing was slipping, long-term yields were tanking and other economic signals were fraying in the wake of the trade war. So please, no convenient COVID excuses.

See: Yield Curve Hits New 2019 Steepener Today

They were preparing to inflate because the Continuum told them to prepare. COVID-19 dropped the final hammer on the situation and brought the inflation on quicker and more intensely than might have otherwise been the case.

30 year yield

So anyway, on to the lovable Amigos. Continue reading "Metals Ratios Continue To Indicate Inflation" →

Bitcoin: My 1 Reason Why

Posted on by Gary Tanashian

MarketWatch used to pick up my posts on rare occasion but has not done so for a long time. Maybe they think I make fun of some of their articles or something. I don’t know what would give them that idea. I actually find MarketWatch useful in ironic and non-ironic ways.

But anyway, this morning an article tags along with the recent near-deafening Bitcoin noise…

6 reasons bitcoin is trading at its highest level since 2017 — and 1 warning

6 reasons are given for Bitcoin’s re-found popularity. They are the usual pap, including a Dollar/Gold rationalization.

“Bitcoin as a form of digital gold is also seeing its time in the sun as we see the floodgates open on monetary policy. Closing the sluice gate is more difficult than opening it,” Charles Hayter, founder and CEO of CryptoCompare, a company engaged in bitcoin data and analytics, told MarketWatch.

Bitcoin is not a form of digital gold. That is one of the zaniest things I’ve ever seen in print. I am admittedly an old fashioned gold valuing curmudgeon. But in my opinion, Bitcoin is a digital concept; one that I think can be controlled or co-opted by governments more readily than the gold buried in the woods behind some crusty old bug’s shack (to boot, the digital kids are not guarding their hoards with physical shotguns, just maybe virtual hacks or viruses).

1 Reason Why

It was time. Bitcoin is having its technical day in the sun and only this week hit the target NFTRH has had for it since early 2020. Due to nutty rationale like the above and the weight of momentum-fueled money starting to pile in, not to mention an overbought reading on this weekly chart, I think it can pull back here. Possibly to support at the 12500-13500 level. Continue reading "Bitcoin: My 1 Reason Why" →

United States Still Going Bananas

Posted on by Gary Tanashian

You see, it’s not a Trump thing. It’s an ‘America is so hopelessly indebted (as are other developed economies) that they have no choice now’ thing.

However, the election shakes out – most likely Democrat president and congress, Republican senate – the stock market is cheering two things in my opinion. It is cheering US dollar compromising fiscal stimulus (Fed prints, politicians spend) and the coming of more US dollar compromising monetary policy (Fed prints, Fed monetizes bonds AKA debt, Fed screws with any other esoteric tool it can get its hands on in the age of MMT TMM, AKA Total Market Manipulation).

I have a still profitable position against the Euro that is about to tick un-profitable this morning. That was my hedge against a firming US dollar, which is the anti-market to the US stock market especially, but also to many global markets because I am long US and global stocks. I may have to pull back to hedging stocks (including gold stocks) with high cash levels. So says the ongoing inflationary operation.

I had projected an A-B-C bear market bounce in Uncle Buck, just to keep the macro honest and put a spook into market bulls. But it appears – due to the joy breaking out everywhere – that I will have been wrong about ‘C’. That’s what this breakdown below support (now short-term resistance) says, anyway.

dxy market

We are going bananas not because Trump is/was just another politician when it comes to the modern American tradition of debt-leveraged inflation to disenfranchise the middle and poor and enrich the already spectacularly wealthy. We are going bananas because Continue reading "United States Still Going Bananas" →

Gold Miners: Beautiful Pictures

Posted on by Gary Tanashian

After a well-deserved correction of nearly 3 months, the gold stock sector is still flashing positive signs beneath the surface, as the correction matures.

The correction that began in August amid the ‘Buffett Buys a Gold Stock!‘ tout has now ground on for nearly 3 months. As noted in the NFTRH 626 Opening Notes segment:

“Thus far the correction in gold, silver and the miners is perfect, where perfection means long, drawn out and maddeningly frustrating to bulls (and bears thus far). That’s what corrections are, remedies to excitement, confidence and of course, greed.”

We are managing the technical details (and associated strategies) of the correction in HUI and individual gold stocks each week in NFTRH, but as a gold stock investor, it has not been a time for making money since August. As a trader, it has been a difficult time for making money as well, because of the lack of a definitive drop that the sector’s corrections are known for. It has been a grind, and in that annoying, time-consuming process, it has been perfect.

Below are some pictures that we have maintained front and center during the correction in order to disqualify or more likely, confirm the macro bull view for gold and the miners. This was so that subscribers could sell, buy or hold as they see fit, but more importantly so that we could know the status of the backdrop all along the way to make better-informed decisions.

Meanwhile, the perfection has been in the cleaning of the investor base, a large portion of which thinks that inflation is good for gold miners. Often it is for the stock prices, but rarely is it good for the bedrock sector fundamentals. One of the best measures of the real price of gold is the Gold/CRB ratio, which is in part of the measure of the gold mining product vs. gold mining costs, especially energy costs. Continue reading "Gold Miners: Beautiful Pictures" →

The Copper/Gold Ratio Would Change The Macro

Posted on by Gary Tanashian

The Copper/Gold ratio is saying something. That something is that a cyclical, pro-inflation and thus pro-economic reflation metal shown earlier, remaining nominally positive on a down market day has, in relation to gold, taken out two important moving averages (daily SMA 50 & SMA 200) and is currently riding the short-term EMA 20 upward. RSI and MACD are positive.

Copper: Pro-cyclical inflation, pro-reflation, pro-economy.

Gold: Counter-cyclical, monetary, with inflationary utility.

Given the right circumstances (like desperate monetary and fiscal policy), which are in play on the wider macro, gold will probably do quite well moving forward. But maybe – for a while – not as well as some commodities if the Copper/Gold ratio really is up to something positive here.

copper/gold ratio

Side note: the Palladium/Gold ratio is on the verge of going positive as well and of course the daddy of inter-metal ratios, the Gold/Silver ratio is still on a big picture breakdown (Silver/Gold has broken above a key long-term resistance marker). So you might want to look at these three metallic indicators together (along with more traditional non-metallic inflation indicators) in gauging the process toward inflation. Continue reading "The Copper/Gold Ratio Would Change The Macro" →