Colorado was enjoyable & beautiful, I even went into a silver mine and came back with a chunk of silver ore (90 oz/ton), but I was glad to get back to Tennessee. I've run short of time today (sounds stupid, since every day has the same 24 hours), so I have to review markets quickly. The US dollar index is sinking out of sight. Sure, it rose 23 basis points today (0.25%) to 92.95, but who cares? Since June it has sunk from 95.22, a massive 207 basis points, now at its lowest price since April 2016. Here's a 3-year chart, http://schrts.co/RDoi6J Y'all, I'm bumfuzzled. This looks like a broadening top, completed by that head & shoulders top in 2017 and the following breakdown & plunge. But a reader sent me a chart that jerked me up short, claiming as it did that the last three years have been forming an upside-down head and shoulders, which would roughly make that top boundary of the megaphone the neckline. If that's accurate, the dollar index might rally to 110. On the other hand, the dollar index has been careening down a cliff with no brakes or parachute. A close below 91.88, the 2016 low, breaks the dam or a cascade all the way to the 80s. Meanwhile silver & gold are signaling strong rallies coming, which won't square with a rallying dollar. Well, which is it? Durned if I know, I'm jes a nat'ral born durn fool from Tennessee. If I had any sense I'd be a pollytician in Washington making big money taking bribes from banks. Let the market tell us. If it breaks that 2016 low, oh! And then closes below 90, that would attract short sellers from around the globe. Jes wait, the market will speak. I'm fixin' to show y'all five stock index charts, all displaying similar topping patterns & one non-confirming. Here's the Dow Industrials, hittin' new highs, http://schrts.co/vFKNPc The Dow & the Dow alone has broken out above the megaphone formation. Any misstep could throw it through that uptrend from November 2016. Overbought, thy name is the Dow's RSI. Ri'chere is the S&P500, http://schrts.co/29eWPz Mark the megaphone or broadening top. Mark the rising wedge formed within that megaphone by the uptrend line from November 2016. Same pattern as the Dow, but not confirming the Dow's breakout. Lo, the Nasdaq Composite chart, http://schrts.co/Mh4YR4 Once again, megaphone top, mighty nigh to the rising uptrend from Nov. 2016. Now here is the Nasdaq 100, http://schrts.co/QxKvh7 with another broadening top & rising wedge How about the Russell 2000, http://schrts.co/8mFRje with another broadening top and rising wedge. Durn. I wish I was at least tol'rably intellergent, then I might could parse what it means when the charts for 5 stock indices all show deadly topping formations, but I'm such a durn fool I can't reach up over that hump. Silver today fell back 2.2¢ to 1672.8¢, safely above the 1650¢ resistance. Gold closed Comex $6.00 higher at $1,272.60. Behold the silver chart, http://schrts.co/T6yPyD Few words are required. It made that exhaustion crisis selling low on July 7, then hath clumb ever since, smashing the downtrend line from the July 2016 high and now touching the uptrend from the December 2015 low converging with the downtrend line from the April 2017 high. Party time! And the Commitments of traders show a smaller net commercial short position than at any time since the December 2015 low -- actually, it is now smaller than that. It's a gigantic silver bull trap for silver shorts. Their terror when silver begins rising will provide the rally's first tank of gas. Now gold, http://schrts.co/T6yPyD After that exhaustion low on 7 July, gold has rallied and rallied, up past the downtrend line from the June high, through the 200 DMA, the 20 & 50 DMAs, an now thru the downtrend line from the July 2016 high. What more do I want? A close above $1,300, followed by rapid progress through $1,325. And gold will get that, although right here it might take a little breather before it does. I keep having Susan Flashbacks. That what I call reminders -- seeing a place or person -- that trigger a memory. Puts me in a trance for a few seconds, not sad, just transported to another place where I can't hear people talking to me. All I can think about is Susan. These aren't all heartbreaking or sad. Almost all are fun, and some downright funny. A few years ago a doctor friend told me to take 400 mg of niacin to improve circulation in my ear, maybe sharpen my hearing. Of course, niacin stimulates peripheral circulation so that in 20 minutes or less you turn beet read and itch all over. Susan was, well, let's not say "tight" but let's say "super-frugal." She went to buy niacin, and found a great deal on it. Didn't notice she'd bought 1,000 mg capsules instead of 100 mg capsules. One morning she asked me how many capsules I took. When I said four, she took four of her Bargain niacin. Not 400 mg but 4,000 mg, and she was crimson until 4:00 p.m. She was madder'n a wet wasp, but she took it like a champ 'cause she couldn't blame it on me. I still stayed real quiet till the red wore off.
Argentum et aurum comparanda sunt —
Silver and gold must be bought.
— Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger
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