Gold was enjoying a solid spring rally until a couple weeks ago, nearing major upside breakouts.  But its nice advance has crumbled since, really weighing on sentiment.  Gold fell victim to a rare major short squeeze in US Dollar Index futures.  The surging USDX motivated gold-futures speculators...

In this past weekend’s missive, I quoted Jeffrey Hirsch, editor of the “StockTrader’s Almanac,” on the entrance of the market into the “seasonally weak” 6-month period for stocks. “May officially marks the beginning of the ‘Worst Six Months’ for the DJIA and S&P. To wit: ‘Sel...

The gold miners’ stocks have mostly been consolidating low this year, exacerbating bearish sentiment.  Even with gold grinding higher in a solid uptrend and nearing a major upside breakout, the gold stocks just can’t get any love.  But that may be about to change, with gold and its miners’ s...

In this past weekend’s newsletter I discussed the market hitting “the wall” last week. This failure at the downtrend resistance keeps us on a defensive posture for now, but still allocated to the market as the longer-term bullish trend remains intact. I know. It’s confusing. However, this is...

Buffett is full of pithy quotes. One of my favorites is, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” In the realm of investing, the tide of liquidity (or the amount of money circulating in the markets) is primarily affected by expansions and contractions in two pr...

With so much focus on bitcoin lately, we’ve added a new weekly update that tracks the three largest cryptocurrencies by market share: bitcoin, Ether, and Ripple. According to Wikipedia, a cryptocurrency is “a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses cryptography t...

Gold remains largely forgotten, off the radars of most investors.  But that’s likely to change soon as this leading alternative investment is nearing a major bull breakout.  Once gold climbs to decisive new bull-market highs, sentiment will turn and investors’ interest will surge.  Their resu...

Friday’s commitment of traders (COT) report for gold and silver offered more of the same. Which is to say the gold futures action was boring and the silver action was strange and exciting. Starting with gold, the large speculators – who, remember, tend to be wrong at big turning points – got a...

In our portfolio management practice, we focus on weekly and monthly data to smooth out daily volatility. Since we are longer-term investors, our focus remains on being invested during rising (bullish) trends and more heavily weighted to fixed income and cash during declining (bearish) trends. T...

There is a very good chance we witnessed the top in bitcoin when it hit just under $20,000 in December of 2017. The rapid price gains it achieved last year officially put it in the record books as the largest bubble ever recorded, exceeding even the Tulip Mania of 1634-1637.   With the amount of a...

Ignoring or downplaying these fundamental forces has greatly increased the fragility of the status quo. The term dead cat bounce is market lingo for a “recovery” after markets decline due to fundamental reversals. Markets tend to bounce back after sharp declines as participants (human an...

Gold’s strong upleg accelerated this week, powering to major new breakout highs.  Speculators rushed to buy gold futures following surprising weak-dollar comments from the US Treasury Secretary, which hit the US dollar hard.  That boosted gold to critical technical levels that should really inte...

There seems to be a very large consensus the markets have entered into a “permanently high plateau,” or an era in which price corrections in asset prices have been effectively eliminated through fiscal and monetary policy. Partnering with this fairytale like mindset is an overwhelming sense o...

“Wild” doesn’t begin to describe Bitcoin’s price action. Less than 12 months ago, it traded as low as $1,200. By early December, it hit a high of $19,891 – and on the CBOE, Bitcoin futures topped $20,000. Then, on December 22, Bitcoin crashed to $10,400… then rebounded as...

After what seems like a decade in the shadow of tech stocks and cryptocurrencies, gold and silver are rocking again. Which of course leaves everyone wondering if this is the beginning of the long-awaited epic run, or just a head fake preceding yet another grinding, protracted, soul-sucking decline. ...

They say records are made to be broken and, so far, the US economy is on track to do just that. The current economic expansion is now the third longest in US history going back to 1854. If it can survive through May 2018, it will be the second longest and, if able to survive to July 2019, it will of...