Tim Iacono This item at The Economist has links to their top 20 charts for the year that officially concludes in about 17 hours. Below is the one that, in my estimation, is the most important. It should be an interesting year ahead for China as their efforts to slow inflating asset bubbles will be measured against the potential damage that could be...

The end of 2010 is rapidly approaching and the pundits and commentators continue to make their 2011 market predictions. I for one believe predicting future market moves is a futile endeavor where if you are right one year later you are viewed as a sage; if you are wrong nobody seems to remember or care. In fact, I try not to read any predictions for...

2010 was an awesome year! Yes there were some downs, with the economy and all, but trading wise it was outstanding! I’m sure you’ve read an article or two that I’ve posted from Chris Vermeulen, but I have a little more unknown insight into his trading service and it’s records…If you have followed The Market Guardian throughout...

by Karl Denninger This is vomit-worthy material… Oil is back above $90 a barrel. Copper and cotton have hit record highs. Wheat and corn prices are way up. Over all, world commodity prices have risen by a quarter in the past six months. So what’s the meaning of this surge? Paul gets so close to getting it right, then, of course, he falls right...

Tim Iacono Standard & Poor’s reports(.pdf) that the decline in U.S. home prices is accelerating, both the seasonally adjusted and raw data showing the biggest monthly drop since … March of 2009. Perhaps more important than the recent monthly changes is the stark new reality that year-over-year home price increases have turned back into price...

From MyBudget360 H/T Zero Hedge Retirement account fantasy and middle class erosion – 1 out of 3 Americans has zero dollars in a retirement account. From 1950 to 1989 top 1 percent earned roughly 7 to 8 percent of nationwide income. Today it is inching closer to 20 percent resembling pre-Great Depression levels. Many Americans live precariously close...

By Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT Normally we write about the things and conditions that cause precious metals to rise. While these things may be obvious, the corresponding rise in the bull market will not always be consistent and linear. Small and large corrections will occur along the way. Some will be purely technical while some have real drivers....

By Phil of Phil’s Stock World It’s going to be another light trading week. Europe is off 1.25% this morning (8am) as the Shanghai fell 2% and the Hang Seng dropped 0.3% on news that China was raising rates 0.25% for the second time in 2 months – weeks ahead of what most considered a fairly aggressive tightening schedule.  Chinese...

Tim Iacono The “We’re Not Printing Money” denials from Fed Chief Ben Bernanke are now starting to become tiresome and, in what would probably come as a huge surprise to the detached and myopic bunch at the central bank, these denials are surely not doing much good in bolstering public opinion about the need for the institution that they oversee...

Submitted by Tyler Durden Sprott’s John Embry is in fine form today: in a just released oped in the Investor’s Digest of Canada, the Chief Investment Strategist of Sprott Asset Management LP, and one of the biggest fans of shiny metals in history, makes the following bold prediction, which also explains how he views the concerted attempts...

Gold Scents It’s almost impossible to find anyone who is long term bearish on the stock market or economy at this time. In the recent Barron’s poll every single analyst expected a rise in stock prices next year and continued economic expansion. I think they are all going to be wrong, horribly wrong. I believe next year the stock market...

By Elliott Wave International TREASURIES — the very name conveys a thing that is secure, protected, and will appreciate over time. Otherwise, it’d be called something like “TRASHeries” or “Mattress Stuffers.” Then, there’s the official seal of the US Department of Treasury: its image of a scale and a key symbolize...

by Tyler Durden Following Friday’s failed 3 Month Bill auction, things in China are once again getting interesting, just as the rest of the world has decided to sleep right into 2011. The PBoC, in a surprise move, hiked its lending and deposits rates by 0.25%, the second time the bank has done so since October 19, when its then-raise was...

Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist By Annaly Capital Management Seasonally adjusted greetings to Annaly Salvos readers around the world! In the commercial spirit of the season (and a day early for our blog post this week), we thought we’d go down a level from the headline retail sales numbers, which have been trending strongly of late. In...

By Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT Monday morning I was greeted via my inbox with a Bloomberg report on Gold. Bloomberg has a series called “The Dark Side of Gold.” Its important to note this isn’t the first time the news organization has attempted a hit-piece on Gold. I wrote about this exactly one year ago and identified the cases and examples of Bloomberg’s...