News stories are surfacing again about counterfeit coins pouring counterfeit coins pouring out of China. See http://www.wealthwire.com/news/headlines/2204?r=1. Remember that counterfeiters most often counterfeit coins that carry large premiums, so that out of an ounce of $,1800 gold they can produce 20 one-dollar coins that sell for $10,000 an ounce. That's another reason always to stick with low premium bullion type coins and eschew numismatic coins. Besides, the weight and dimensions of bullion coins -- Austrian 100 coronas, Mexican 50 pesos, Krugerrands, American Eagles, Maple Leaves -- are all known, and simply by WEIGHING you will catch almost all counterfeits. You'll find a complete chart of weights for gold coins at www.the-moneychanger.com. Click on "Protect Yourself Against Counterfeits." These counterfeit reports generate waves of hysteria in the market, when in fact counterfeit gold coins are generally a negligible problem. Of course, you ought always work with a reliable gold & silver dealer who has been in business for a long time -- like us. Remember that thirty years' experience might not mean much. Many dealers have 30 years' experience, but it's only one year's experience thirty times. Be careful, and count your change. Today's markets really didn't tell us very much. Stocks dropped a smidgen, along with silver & gold, while the euro fell and the dollar index rose. Still, everything remains in the old familiar trading ranges. Wait -- y'all don't think markets really have been fooled by those two Establishment front men installed to end all popular government in Italy & Greece, do y'all? As I always say, the Establishment has only two weapons, liquidity and blarney. Those two shills represent big booms from the Blarney Cannon. To the facts! US dollar index rose 60.8 basis points or 0.78% to 77.471, a sizeable move. What accomplisheth this on the 5-day chart? Wednesday last week the $ index rose straight up from 76.6 to 78.0, peaked nearly 78.20 early Thursday, then fell into Friday's low about 76.8. It left behind a support level at 77.40. Thus today's rise, clearing 77.40, contradicts all that downside last week, and points the dollar up again. As long as it advances tomorrow, 'twill be in rally mode. Watching the Japanese yen is as embarrassing as accompanying your friend to his daughter's piano recital where you doesn't know the piece & thumbfingers her way through. Money has been fleeing Europe & some wanted to run into the yen, but the Japanese Nice Government Men couldn't allow that, because a higher yen chokes off Japanese imports, and Japan is nothing more than an island-factory exporting to live. At last they acted, and the yen dropped from 132c/Y100 to 127.50 in one day. But it was shortsighted, because they only punished those long Yen without giving them a reason not to buy yen again. The yen has since crept up to close 129.69 today, up 0.87% & above its 20 day moving average (129.62 today). Worse still, it has crept back above the downtrend line and the trading range above that, and is about to cross above the 50 dma (129.93). All this isn't because the Yen is the prettiest currency around and everybody wants to dance with her. Rather, she just doesn't have quite as many warts as all the other girls. The euro rose on Friday with the news that Fixers had been installed in Italy & Greece, but puked back all those gains today. Closed 1.3630, down 0.87%, and headed for 1.2000. STOCKS today continued slowly the decline begun from Friday. That Friday peak itself is part of a double top about 12,175. Expectation remains -- unless gainsaid by a close above 12,175 -- that the Dow Jones Industrial Average will continue to sink. Momentum is BARELY up since the Dow stands above its 200DMA (11,977), but not by much. May still see one last push up to 12,400 before it collapses, but sooner or later collapse it will. Dow closed down 74.62 (0.61%) at 12,079.06. S&P 500 dropped more, 11.94 (0.94%), to 1,251.91. Gold tripped $9.70 to close at $1,777.80 on Comex, but that painted no big break on the chart. All it did was return to that well-known $1,775 support, reserving its option to challenge $1,800 again this week. The five day chart shows gold touching $1,800 last Wednesday, and nearly touching it again this weekend. That could make a double top, but gold has not tipped its hand yet. A trend in force remains in force until broken, & gold's uptrend hasn't been broken yet. A break below $1,775 would hurt gold badly, pointing it toward a minimum $75 and possibly $100 drop (as low as $1,675). Danger of that happening would be annihilated by a two-day gold close above $1,800, & break gold out upside. Silver is mimicking gold, but with a bit less fervor. She has returned to that well known 3400c support/resistance, & the stakes here are high. Should silver fall through 3400c, it steps off the top of the building into thin air. Today's range was 3478 - 3393c. Most likely course is a downside break, since silver has formed an ascending wedge which usually resolves by breaking out downside. That, however, could reverse in an instant with any slip by the Fixers in Europe. Markets are nervous as a banker in church. Here's a message for gold-silver swappers. If back earlier this year you swapped out of silver into gold, you can now swap back into silver with an approximate 37% gain. I'd grab that. (That will only work if you swap back into US 90% silver coin. Any other form of silver severely lowers your gain in ounces because they carry such high premiums.) On 14 November 1501 Arthur Tudor of England Married Katherine of Aragon. What so important about that? Arthur Tudor was the prince of Wales and heir apparent to the English throne. But before long he died, and was succeeded by his brother, Henry Tudor. Henry also married his brother's widow, sired by her a daughter, Mary, then in later years his conscious grew scrupulous about marrying his brother's widow. It grew more scrupulous the longer he waited for her to produce a male heir. His desire to divorce her eventually became one of the causes the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church. 14 November 1940 marked the virtual destruction of the English city of Coventry by the German Luftwaffe in retaliation for British RAF attacks on the Ruhr. Both sides blamed the others for starting it, but it escalated into the unspeakable firebombings of Hamburg & Dresden, which created literal firestorms, & the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Following the precedent of Abraham Lincoln & the Union Army against the Southern states, all nations abandoned the rules of war developed in the Christian West over 18 centuries, rules aimed mainly at sparing civilian populations from the terrors of war. For all sides, Total War became the rule.
Argentum et aurum comparanda sunt —
Silver and gold must be bought.
— Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger
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