Posts from ‘November, 2009’

Emotions, preconceived ideas, opinion, ideas, knowledge, beliefs…………mention a name of a stock, index, market, sector etc and all these things will flood our grey matter and hopefully from that will come a decision (of course many individuals are unable to come to any decision but that is another story). Yet this decision will likely be [...]

The popular commodity indices such as the Goldman, Rogers, DJUBS, and CRB suggest that commodities are in a rather confused state. The “trends” are somewhat messy with no clear indication as to which way they are likely to break over the coming days.

However, if one were to look a little deeper into the action of [...]

The emperor took off all his clothes, and the swindlers pretended to dress him, piece by piece, with the new ones that were to be fitted. Then the emperor turned and looked into the mirror.

“Goodness, they suit you well! What a wonderful fit!” they all said. “What a pattern! What colors! Such luxurious clothes!” “Yes, [...]

There still appears to be a general disbelief in the macro trends of equities, commodities, and real estate assets. It seems that even the slightest trip up results in a flood reappearance of “told you so” perma-bears. We could understand this behaviour if there were breaches of significant levels of support but as one can [...]

Commodity markets have been somewhat frustrating as of late with the major indices (CRB, DJUBS, GSG, Rogers Int.) relatively little changed since the start of June. In fact the broad based ETF that we use to gain exposure to commodities in general is trading exactly where it was on June 1st! So much for [...]

The only change of trend between the major “asset classes” appears to be in the US treasury market. For now at least equities, commodities, real estate, and currencies are all well within their respective trends that are now some 10 months old. This is going to be a rather telling week for the bond [...]

In 2004 whilst giving a presentation on the outlook for the South African Rand to an audience of very influential South African exporters, a member of the audience popped a question to me that I will never forget. He asked me, what would happen to the Rand Dollar if the US were to default on [...]

With all the talk about money printing and buying back of treasuries we decided to have a look at the US Monetary Base on Friday. We knew that it had blown out late last year but had gone sideways for the first six months of the year. Actually we have neglected to look at it [...]

It continues to amaze us how everyone is talking about a shift in economic influence to the east but few seem that interested in the behaviour of the stock market of the economic powerhouse of the world, i.e. China. Everyone seems obsessed by the behaviour of the S&P 500 and Russell 2000! Let us remind [...]

It seems that the prospects for commodities keep on getting better! Every which way we look we see more evidence of support for higher commodity prices over the coming months. This flies in the face of what “deflationists” continue to preach with enthusiasm! Yet the evidence is there and the broad trends appear decisively strong! [...]