Pull the trigger with confidence.

There is more information in the plot of a McClellan Price Oscillator than just up or down, high or low.   Looking at its structures can give us additional information about the strength of a trend.

This week’s chart looks at the AMEX Gold Miners Index, GDM.  It is showing us things right now which make for a good opportunity for a lesson about Price Oscillator structures.  The Price Oscillator for the GDM is falling right now, but there is more information in its chart plot than just up... Read More

A peak in global average temperatures in 2015-16 is foretelling a bottom for long term bond yields.  But to understand that point, I need to explain this week’s chart.

It shows an inverted plot of Moody’s Aaa corporate bond yield, with proxy data for the years before Moody’s began that series in 1919.  Also in that chart is a plot of the HadCRUT4 global average temperature series, published by England’s Hadley Climate Research Unit, at the University of East Anglia.  One key adjustment is... Read More

Since the 2000 election, I have done comparisons of presidential poll numbers and the stock market, which have provided useful insights about how the election was going to turn out.  This year, I am not so sure about it working as it has in the past, and for a variety of reasons. 

This week’s leadoff chart (and I have a bunch more below) compares the DJIA to the Rasmussen poll numbers for the election matchup between President Trump and former Vice President Biden.  For most of this year,... Read More

The VIX futures contract is a comparatively new product in the financial markets, first traded in March 2004.  It has come to be an important product, especially for hedge funds who like to make bets with VIX futures.  And in 2020, it is behaving in a way that is quite unusual, and thus worthy of comment.

VIX futures first traded in 2004, but did not catch on as a meaningful part of the financial markets until 2012.  That was when VIX futures first exceeded 200,000 contracts, and so it is a... Read More

Gold prices are important not just to traders of gold coins, but also as a great leading indicator of lots of things that will happen in the future.  This week’s chart shows one of the messages we can take from gold prices, which concerns long-term interest rates. 

In this chart, the plot of gold prices has been shifted forward by 20-1/2 months, in order to help reveal how the dance steps that gold prices make tend to get repeated by long term interest rates.  The Treasury Yield Index (TYX)... Read More

The SP500 has been correlating very strongly with its Presidential Cycle Pattern (PCP) over the past 5 months.  It does not always correlate so strongly, so to see this current strong correlation gives greater confidence for how prices should behave forward from here.  The key message is that October should see a lot of sideways chop, as it normally does in an election year, as investors worry about the outcome of the upcoming presidential and congressional elections.

One curiousity is that... Read More

Can this marriage be saved?  The normal condition for the past 3 decades has been for gold prices to generally move in step with the Russell 2000/1000 relative strength ratio shown in this week’s chart.  When the two disagree, it is usually the relative strength ratio which ends up being right about where both are headed. 

Since 2018, however, that normal relationship has not been working right.  The Fed’s efforts to boost economic growth, especially in the wake of the March 2020 Covid... Read More

The total Fed holdings of Treasury debt and mortgage backed securities (MBS) held by the Fed are now up to $6.4 trillion, and up by $68.8 billion this week for the weekly data reported on Sep. 16.  All of that money-printing is adding to the total money supply, and it has assuredly helped to lift stock prices up out of the February to March 2020 Covid Crash. 

A lot of analysts believe that all of this money printing is bullish for gold prices.  That belief system actually makes a lot of... Read More