Courtesy of Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT It has been a tough year for the mining stocks. The large stocks have moved back and forth in a range from support to resistance while the mid tiers and juniors have really struggled especially in recent months. With Europe seemingly on the brink and most markets turning down, it is an opportune time to examine the technical support of the various gold and silver Read More...

Submitted by Tyler Durden Today, BusinessWeek’s Michael Serrill and Jonathan Neumann have released a blockbuster report based on a FOIA response by the Treasury, which proves that in America rules are only for little people, that this country has been a banana republic for years, that Animal Farm was spot on, and gives excruciating detail of how Hank Paulson tipped off a select group of G Read More...

Courtesy of Mish It’s difficult to catch the early news from Europe and the US open as well, unless one never sleeps. Here we are in the midst of another flatline gap-up rally. Here is an intraday chart of the S&P 500. S&P 500 3-Minute Chart As with the last gap-up on rumors now dead, I confidently predict this nearly-3% gap will fill sooner, rather than later. Let’s take another lo Read More...

by Karl Denninger Oh, so there was inside information passed around? On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie’s books and cited Pauls Read More...

Courtesy of Fallond Stock Picks I had looked to ‘Black Friday’ as the day we would see the big one-day rally. Instead, Monday (or more precisely, pre-market Monday) was when markets booked their gain. Unfortunately, the gains came at a cost. First up was the Russell 2000. It posted nearly a 5% gain, but it wasn’t enough to recover a net bearish turn in technicals. Monday’s Read More...

By. James Burgess of Oil Price.com Back in July Larry Page became Google’s new chief executive and immediately began a campaign to reign in Google’s projects and focus their resources. This was due to the stiff competition they were facing in mobile computing and social networking from Apple and Facebook, and also investor sentiment towards increasing expenditure on none core businesse Read More...

by The Mad Hedge Fund Trader If you want to delve into the case against the long term future of US Treasury bonds in all their darkness, take a look at Foreign Affairs, the establishment bimonthly journal read by academics, intelligence agencies, and politicians alike, which I am sure you all have sitting on your nightstands. In a well-researched and thought out article penned by Roger C. Altman Read More...

by Karl Denninger The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing. The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took t Read More...

Courtesy of Bruce Krasting   Some stories in European press (La Stampa – Zero Hedge link) suggest that Italy is working on a very big loan package from the IMF. I have no doubt that there are ongoing discussions. There has to be. Either someone puts a finger in the dike or Italy goes tapioca.  That thought is difficult for me to fathom. How could we be so close to the brink? A Read More...

by Tyler Durden By now the broader population has been inundated with reports of what a stunning retail experience Black Friday was. And for those who haven’t just head over to CNBC: “Sales rose an estimated 6.6 percent to a record $11.4billion on Black Friday, typically the busiest shopping day of the year for Americans, while the traffic at stores rose 5.1 percent, according to Sho Read More...

Thus far in 2011 the overall stock market movement has been much different from what we had in 2010. This year we have seen nothing but sideways to lower prices with wild price swings on a day to day basis. There just has not been any really solid trends to take advantage of this year. Instead we had to actively trade the oversold dips and sell into the overbought rallies to just pull money out of Read More...

 H/T Tyler Durden Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds A Glimpse Into The Future Of The Stock Market And Dollar The “accident” many have been waiting for has finally happened, and it’s called Europe. That doesn’t bode well for the U.S. stock market. A lot of technical analysts and financial pundits are expecting a standard-issue Santa Claus Rally once a  Read More...

by Karl Denninger If you were wondering why the S&P dumped 20 points from the high to the low (on which it closed) yesterday, here’s your reason: The Greeks are demanding that the new bonds’ Net Present Value, — a measure of the current worth of their future cash flows — be cut to 25 percent, a second person said, a far harsher measure than a number in the high 40s th Read More...

Gold Scents I have decided to post the weekend premium report to the blog this week. In this report I’m going to take a look at what has transpired and what is likely to come, as the third leg down in the secular bear market begins to intensify. Back in April of this year I warned investors to get out of stocks in their 401(k) accounts. At the time the dollar was moving into the timing band Read More...

Tim Iacono More from The Economist, from today’s interactive Daily Chart where, with the exception of the U.K.,  it’s relatively easy to identify which housing bubbles have already burst: Ireland clearly had the biggest boom/bust cycle, though, some parts of the U.S. (e.g., Nevada, Arizona, California, etc.) would no doubt rival that rise and fall. Remarkably, home prices are still rising Read More...