Whoa! You all are Johnny-on-the-spot for doing favors! I asked y'all last Wednesday to take a survey for me to find out what y'all want or don't want in my daily commentary. Not quite a stadium full of folks responded, & I deeply appreciate it. Thank you. Now, for the rest of you heel-diggers and foot-draggers. This is NOT a trick to worm your email address out of you. No emails about Caribbean cruises, Burial insurance, or Things Better Left Unmentioned & Unmentionable. Besides, think about it: if you subscribe, I already have your email. So, please, as a favor to an old Moneychanger, take the survey at http://bit.ly/1XrVchK Three minutes, no more. Taking the survey, even tardy, gets you a chance to win signed copies of At Home in Dogwood Mudhole Volumes 1 & 2, Heiland, and The Greening. One winner will receive all four books, with a drawing on 11 December 2015. I thank y'all in advance, most heartily. TODAY'S MARKETS: The world conference on climate change a.k.a. global warming a.k.a. global cooling opened in Paris today, and promises to do immeasurable damage to the world economy. By a blessed intervention, the last one of these Totalitarian Tête-à-têtes in Copenhagen in 2009 was blown up when somebody hacked email at the Climatic Research Unit at the U. of East Anglia that showed the objective "scientists" were cooking the books in a scientific conspiracy. Whoops. Poor ol' Al Gore, the global bore, faded. But one-world totalitarians are nothing if not persistent, so here six years later they're resurrecting the same old scarecrow with a new name. All we can do is pray for another hacker. Well, we could pray for an epidemic of common sense, but that's not likely among that climate change crowd. International Monetary Fund, scourge of benevolent human beings everywhere, today accepted the Chinese yuan into its reserve currency basket for its phony currency unit, the Special Drawing Right. Before the SDR contained only the US dollar, euro, pound sterling, and yen. The inclusion won't take effect until 1 October 2016. Weightings will be: US dollar, 41.73%, Euro 30.93%, yen 8.33%, pound 8.09%, and yuan 10.92%. This seats China at the table with the Big Boys. The decision makes yuan-denominated assets available to central bank portfolios, but don't expect a run into yuan. The yuan is managed even less skillfully than those other sorry egg-sucking dog currencies. Altogether, the yuan's promotion is more politics and window dressing than substance, but wait. It is a harbinger of the US dollar's decline as the bull reserve currency. With that decline goes US global hegemony, but don't discount the US yet. It's still the only country whose currency is backed by an army that will invade your country if you squawk about its foot on your neck. With all that cheerful news behind us, let's turn to stocks. They had a headache today. Friday was confused with some indices barely up, some barely down, but today the bewilderment dissipated as every index plopped. Dow lost 78.57 or 0.44% to 17,719.92. S&P500 edged down 9.7 (0.46%) to 2,080.41. These are not in themselves death dealing changes, but the Dow closed just below its 20 day moving average and the S&P500 squatted down dead on its 20 DMA. That promises lower prices. Friday's hijinks in silver & gold brought about slightly higher highs in the Dow in gold (16.85 oz.) and Dow in Silver (1,265 oz). Dow in silver is as overbought as antimacassars at an old ladies' convention. Both fell today. US dollar index inched up 14 basis points to 100.21, a new high close for the move, but barely. It has formed a Rising Wedge, which usually breaks out downward (wedges usually break opposite to the direction they point). Scurvy dollar index has not undergone any sizeable correction since it began rising mid-October, so some kick-back is due. MACD has rolled over earthward, Rate of Change rolled over 8 November, and barely crawling above zero line. Chart's at http://schrts.co/DRjkbb What can I say about the euro? What more contempt and scorn can I heap up? What other colorful rotten tomatoes can I throw at it, despicable political Frankenstein of authoritarian bureaucrats, thirsty vampire of national economies? Greedy tick on the armpit of nations? Revolting tapeworm in the body economic? Well, lots if I put my mind to it as it deserves. It fell again, 0.24% to $1.0569. At least its rate of fall is falling. I reckon that's saying something good, but no more'n I have to. Don't nobody pretend the yen isn't managed closer than a five year old girl in one of them beauty pagents, do they? It dropped 0.18% to 81.25. While the Big Cats are away, the little nasty mice will play. Floor traders often play on holiday thinned markets like Thanksgiving. Since they know where the stops are, they're easy to run. Then the market recovers & the day has little effect. On Friday, then, gold dropped $13.80 to close it's very short holiday trading day at $1,056.20 on Comex, lowest since 2011 peak. Silver, however, did NOT confirm with a lower close, although it lost 15 cents to 1400.8c. Nor did gold stock indices confirm with lower closes. All that promises positive days. Today Gold jumped back $9.60 (0.9%) to 1,065.80, but still closed lower for the month. Silver recaptured 4.2 cents (0.3%) to 1405c. Over the weekend, on Saturday, gold again tumbled toward its Friday low about $1,054, but recovered and came back strongly today. So far, so good. If Friday didn't make the low, it ought to come in December's first half. Silver painted a like picture over the weekend, with a 1393c low on Friday, and a 1401c low on Saturday, followed by a less than sterling recovery today. So, what do we have? A new low for gold Friday with silver & gold stocks refusing to confirm. Bullish Commitments of Traders stats for both silver & gold. End of seasonal period for silver & gold lows. Jupiter aligning with Mars -- no, wait, wait, that's not in there -- Strike that. Finally, we have central bank criminals working hard as they can to destroy their currencies, carrying historically unimagined policies to absurd, preposterous lengths. Yep, sounds like a recipe for resuming the silver & gold bull market to me, but shucks! I ain't no New York smarty. I'm just a nat'ral born durned fool from Tennessee. Now what silver & gold need is just some positive reversal sign. Jes' y'all wait. It's comin'. On 30 November 1487 Duke Albert IV of Bavaria promulgated the Reinheitsgebot for beer (Purity Law) stating that beer could contain only three ingredients: Malz, Hopfen, und Wasser -- Malt, Hops, & Water. Well, there has to be Hefe (yeast) in there, too, or you'll wind up with disgusting hop-flavored malt water.
Argentum et aurum comparanda sunt —
Silver and gold must be bought.
— Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger
|
