Sometimes, as traders, we need to stop and do a double-take, especially when a long-depressed commodity or currency suddenly begins to rise sharply. In the case of the US Dollar index (DX), there were most likely thousands of double-takes, as disbelieving traders took a second, third and even a fourth glance at this key currency’s daily and weekly...

Your 5 minute summary of the past week’s market trends and key stock activity. GS Charting 12.18.09

The Dow has managed to claw back 50% of the losses that occurred in 2007 and 2008. The question now is, what’s ahead? In Alan Hewison’s new video he will share with you some of the ideas that he is looking at for this index. He believes we are at a very important crossroads and would not be surprised to see this market lose ground in the next...

MISH A total of 140 banks have failed year to date and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair is adding staff, prepared for even more failures next year. Please consider Seven U.S. Banks Are Seized, Raising Year’s Failure Toll to 140 Seven U.S. banks were seized by regulators today, bringing this year’s total of failed lenders to 140 as financial companies are...

The Mess That Greenspan Made Every time an article like this one at Forbes or this one by Nouriel Roubini crosses my computer screen on the subject of the current “gold bubble”, it gives me quite a chuckle because we’ve become so used to calling things bubbles that, understandably, anything that looks like it’s going up too fast...

By Robert Prechter, CMT The following article is an excerpt from Robert Prechter’s Elliott Wave Theorist. First they bought into the “stocks for the long run” case and got killed. Then they jumped on the commodity bandwagon and got killed. Many investors are buying back into these very same markets, but others are running to what they perceive...

By Louis James, Senior Analyst/Editor, Casey’s International Speculator At a recent Casey Research editors’ meeting, the team took on the question of whether the somewhat steady recovery since last February’s washout bottom in the broader markets had any of us thinking that the recession might be over. The gathering of minds included: Doug Casey,...

Gold Enjoys A 10% Bath Following Strong US Data And Weakness In Euro-Region Submitted By John Bougearel Of Structural Logic Gold Enjoys a 10% Bath

H/T Tyler Durden Did You Make Money? Then It Was a Good Deal By Jim Cramer RealMoney Columnist 12/18/2009 9:30 AM EST http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/jimcramerblog/10649290.html The Citigroup (C) deal was a good deal. It just wasn’t good for the bank. I was adamant the other day — some would say rabid — that you be in on the deal....

Hat Tip Ilene at Phil’s Stock World

The Mess That Greenspan Made Remember, until the banking system makes a complete recovery, the U.S. economy will not be able to make a complete recovery because credit is the nation’s lifeblood. So, when elected officials do things like this that are against the interests of the big banks, they’re really just hurting America – people...

Paul Krugman Ryan Avent is appalled, rightly, at Ben Bernanke’s response to a question from Brad DeLong, who asked why the Fed hasn’t raised its inflation target: The Federal Reserve has not followed the suggestion of some that it pursue a monetary policy strategy aimed at pushing up longer-run inflation expectations. In theory, such an approach...

Joe Weisenthal of Money Game There are a lot of gold bulls out there who advocate playing the mining stocks, instead of the metal, arguing that through the miners you’re getting leverage. That may be true. But leverage works in reverse. In this case it works like this: one month of gold declines = six months worth of gains destroyed. MineWeb,...

Mad Hedge Fund Trader Featured Trades: (FXI), (EWH), (COPPER), (GOLD), (F), (BA), (GE) 1)I confess that I am a total agnostic when it comes to specific investment philosophies, and a complete whore when it comes to trying out any new analysis that walks by. Maybe it’s because of my science and math background, but for me, raw data trumps...

(This guest post was originally published by Euan Mearns at The Oil Drum. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.) Figure 1 Oil supply – demand – price chart, Jan. 2002 to Nov. 2009. See text for explanation. Click to enlarge and open in separate browser window. In February this...