Archive - Feb 2013 - Blog entry

Gold has come under pressure from heavy liquidation by hedge funds and banks on the COMEX this week. The unusual and often 'not for profit' nature of the selling, at the same time every day this week, has again led to suspicions of market manipulation.

Gold’s ‘plunge’ is now headline news which is bullish from a contrarian perspective. As is the fact that many of the same people who have been claiming gold is a bubble since it was $1,000/oz have again been covering gold after periods of silence.

Wal-Mart just called the Fed out. Inflation is already seeping into the system in a big way. Indeed, if you account for real inflation (not the Fed’s phony CPI measure), the US economy contracted by over 1% last quarter.

The President's proposals are gimmicks to hide debt.

Every voice in the FOMC minutes is not a voting member. Bernanke, Yellen, Dudley are the keys and they are committed to QE. That is a descriptive claim not normative. Debt market has shown little reaction to FOMC minutes compared with the dollar and stocks. PBOC drained, but did not really tighten monetary policy. Euro zone PMI poor and gap between Germany and France grows. And what's up with Abe's trip to the US ?

Well Gold hasn`t had a particularly good start to the year, in fact, a good pairs trade would be going long the S&P 500 and short the Gold market for a nice 12% return in two months.

Everyone Knew Iraq Had No WMDS … and Was Not Behind Anthrax Attacks or 9/11

A microcosm of what's wrong with the French economy (while the chopping block is being moved to the center)

You can choose to ignore this and believe that Europe’s Crisis is fixed just as EU political leaders claim. But Europe in general is out of options in terms of solving its debt crisis.

I wouldn't order something called a "meat sandwich", would you?--George Carlin

If it ain't broke, how do you fix it? Here are a variety of solutions from practictioners, academics and investors.

Hence the cost basis of their investments is much higher with each artificial liquidity injection. This is great for current retirees, but at the expense of future retirees who now have inflated assets that will deflate once the Fed takes away the proverbial punch bowl. 

Sterling is has eclipsed the yen as the main focus in the foreign exchange market. The surprising news that has kicked it to fresh multi-month low was that the BOE is closer to easing policy than has been suspected. While it was a unanimous decision to leave rates on hold as expected, it was a tighter 6-3 vote on new asset purchases.

The market had expected a 8-1 vote. Of particular interest, it is the fourth time Governor King has been outvoted.

A curious thing happened last week: the prices of gold and silver fell while open interest in futures rose.  This is not how the market has been behaving in recent years.

Before everyone gets too excited about the "great rotation" that still remains a ghost, keep in mind that the entire curve is still >1 standard deviation below its historical mean

LinkedIn appears to be social media, done correctly. It's share price reacted accordingly... This is not Facebo... Uh, I mean AOL!