I suspect that stocks , having reached Dow 23,000, are nearing the end of their run. Interesting that the Dow today rose 160.16 (0.7%) while the S&P500 rose only 1.9 (0.07%) to 2,561.26. Nasdaq rose 0.01% and the Nasdaq 100 actually fell 0.13%. That suggests that fewer and fewer stocks are participating in the rise. Ahh, but a break is needed to confirm, and there's ne'er a sign of that yet, only suspicions. Here is the Dow Industrials chart, http://schrts.co/Q6KUW0 so that you can see where it today "threw over" the upper boundary of a tightening wedge, which often signals a move's end. Notice how overbought the RSI (above) is. Doesn't matter what the market is, parabolic rises are always fatal. US dollar index lost 7 basis points (0.7%) to end at 93.31. Here's the chart, but only updated through yesterday. http://schrts.co/4dSmRv Yes there's no change -- dollar index is still tracing out the right shoulder of an upside-down head and shoulders reversal. I wish there were some way I could make this waiting game exciting and fun, but it's just a dud that nobody enjoys, like eating Spam casseroles at pot luck dinners. You keep doing it to be nice, maybe even put a little of that spew jello salad on your plate, too, in case the maker is watching, but that don't mean you like it and "nice" can't make it taste good. Y'all won't believe this, but my mother grew up in the Depression and she actually liked Spam, I believe. At any rate, occasionally she would cook it by sprinkling brown sugar on it and roasting it in the oven till the sugar melted. Buddy, growing up in the 1950s was no picnic. Y'all go look at the gold/silver ratio, http://schrts.co/kh9gOy Observe that during this silver & gold decline it has risen a little, back to the 50 day moving average it had crashed through & up to the top downtrending channel boundary. So far, that's whispering that there's not much to fear from the decline, but I would like to see it fall through the last low at 74.26 and keep falling through the 200 DMA. I reckon that stocks & Bitcoin have so stolen the investment limelight that my phone may never ring again. I'm thinking about bringing a pallet to work so I can nap during the day. Actually, that inactivity is probably a contrarian sign that silver and gold are near re-entering the limelight. Human nature dictates that investors never buy when prices are low; they always wait to buy a rising market. I reckon we are herd animals after all. Comex trading saw gold lose $3.10 (0.24%) to end at $1,279.90. Silver peeled off 4.4¢ (0.265) to 1694.3¢. Stare at gold's chart a minute, http://schrts.co/cib1wh There's a proverb that "Gaps are always filled." True, but the timing is not specified. Today gold filled the gap left when it jumped higher. So let's see tomorrow if that stops the slide, or it continues. By the way, notice that both metals fell much less today, and that volume fell. Silver's chart, http://schrts.co/o96FnV shows declining volume, a filled gap, and silver above the 20 DMA and holding on at the green uptrend line from the 2015 low. If that was roast chicken and I was eating it, I'd say that was pretty stringy. Bottom line of all this is that no evidence appears yet that silver & gold have stopped falling. I get right tired of people rubbing my nose in stocks & how they are outperforming gold. I was thinking today about a customer who came to us in 1998. She bought a lot of gold around $300 - $250 and a lot of silver around $5, and periodically has added a little to it. Now in a world with a four second attention span focused on hoppin' from hot market to hot market, the naïve might conclude she made a mistake passing up all those stock market gains. A chart explains this plumb quick. Here's the S&P500 valued in gold since 1980, http://schrts.co/axLUH8 What does it say? Remember as the graph rises, stocks are gaining value against gold, and as it falls stocks are losing value against gold. Stocks rose against gold from 1980 to 1999, so you would have been better off holding stocks during that long gold bear market. The S&P500 cost 5.55 oz. of gold at the peak. But from 1999 to 2011, stocks fell, down to 0.60 oz, losing 89% of their value against gold. No, ma'am, that is NOT a typo: 89%. Today the S&P500/Gold spread closed at 1.996 oz, down 3.596 oz from the peak or 65%. Y'all don't forget this is a log scale chart, where the scale reflects percentage, not absolute moves. All things weighed and pondered, my customer looks pretty shiny sitting in silver & gold. But what do I know? I'm jes' a nat'ral born durn fool from Tennessee. One more thing? How many of y'all this morning on your way to work saw eight young wild turkeys walking down the road and leaping into the air to fly off? How about a deer that raced up to the side of the road, spied you, and turned and hightailed into the woods? I did. I wouldn't trade all that for pavement and traffic jams.
Argentum et aurum comparanda sunt —
Silver and gold must be bought.
— Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger
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