Dec 2nd, 2009 The market has had a fantastic week so far for stocks and precious metals. The financial and energy sector are underperforming which is a concern, but we continue to hold our positions and will wait until a reversal to lock in our gains. Things seem to be lining up for stocks and precious metals to take a breather, which is in line with the Dow Jones Seasonal chart below. Let’s tak Read More...

The Pragmatic Capitalist (This guest post originally appeared at the author’s blog) The granddaddy of economic reports is out this Friday – the monthly jobs report.  Consensus is looking for another large loss of -100K jobs and a steady unemployment rate at 10.2%.  This would market a dramatic improvement over last month’s -219K. Last months report showed some tepid signs of strength a Read More...

Trading Wall Street Investments Gold’s move through the previous all-time highs has been explosive gaining over 20% in less than 2 months. Some profit-taking is in order into a move so fast…only for the short-term though. The pace of this advance and the accompanying volume indicate that gold will run much higher in the long-term. I am a small profit-taker into this move but I still h Read More...

Scott Redler of T3Live.com The Rundown: Watch BAC closely today–if it can hold this gap up and get some follow-through to the upside it COULD ignite the entire sector. Could is the key word! The banks have been lagging this move since peaking out in October. If they play some catch up, we will be at 1120-1125 at some point today. The agricultural group has been on fire! It was on our Read More...

Mad Hedge Fund Trader Featured Trades: (GOLD), (GLD) (HARD ASSETS INVESTMENT CONFERENCE) 1)Welcome to the new gold standard! There was a time that to own gold you had to be a “gold bug” and believe in the myriad urban legends that percolated in the underground. Fort Knox is either empty, or full of gold plated steel bars. The Treasury cut back on the minting of new gold coins because it had Read More...

CalculatedRisk The DOL reports on weekly unemployment insurance claims: In the week ending Nov. 28, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 457,000, a decrease of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 462,000 [revised from 466,000]. The 4-week moving average was 481,250, a decrease of 14,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 495,500. … Read More...

AC Investor ( click to enlarge ) CRIS broke out on Wednesday and made a new 52-week high of $3. I am keeping CRIS on the list for the continuation move. The stock had big buyers in it all day and looks ready to make another move on Thursday. The daily chart shows a continuation of the trend with MACD and RSI in the Bullish areas. Watch the stock closely tomorrow and once it breaks $3, get ready to Read More...

Here’s a bold interview move: tell your potential employer you want to break them up. According to the WSJ, at least two of the candidates for Bank of America’s (BAC) new CEO job have suggested just that. Maybe it’s true, but then again the media has been wrong on a few BofA-CEO-search details before, so maybe it’s not. One of the biggest misconceptions purported by the me Read More...

Hat Tip Zero Hedge In addition to paying back its $45 billion portion of TARP, the Bank, in what will be Ken Lewis’ last act, will also raise incremental capital. So far in the after house session, the stock is not liking the news very much. In other news, Greg Curl, Chief Risk Officer, is presumably the new CEO although reports so far are conflicted. CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 2 — Bank of Read More...

You may be missing trading opportunities staring you in the face. The charts you look at every day could reveal high-confidence trade setups and market turning points. You can learn how, today. Elliott Wave International (EWI), the world’s largest market forecasting firm, has just extended the “downloading deadline” for their free eBook, How You Can Identify Turning Poin Read More...

By David Galland, Managing Director, Casey Research How the government tries to fleece you and what you can do about it After a relaxing Thanksgiving break, I anticipated to return to work in a lighter frame of mind. However, the following item from FOX News crushed that hope right away: Lawmakers Propose ‘War Surtax’ to Pay for Troop Increase in Afghanistan Two top Democrats say th Read More...

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain For the first time since the 1930’s this decade represents negative returns for the SP500. Remarkably this chart represents nominal total returns. Adjusted for the weaker dollar and inflation, the ‘buy and hold’ philosophy, especially for those nearing their retirements, has been a disaster. But it has been great times for speculators and insiders and t Read More...

Evan Lazarus of T3Live.com Here is a video of this mornings Trade for Thought from T3Live.com, looking for a level to short AAPL on a retracement of yesterday’s down move. These trades are posted online every morning at 9:00 a.m. in order to prepare for the trading day. Be sure to head over to T3Live.com and sign up for their free trial. Read More...

On CNBC this morning, Peter Schiff defended his call of gold $5,000 against Lou Grasso, who says the metal has run well beyond its course. Schiff noted that he’s been a gold bull since before it was cool (since gold $300!). Read More...

Zero Hedge points out the dollar just spiked on more concerns that Japan’s currency posturing may be more than just bureaucratic jawboning. The algos that trade the market as a derivative of the dollar decide to puke stocks. Somewhere Bernanke is rehearsing his reconfirmation speech which emphasizes the Fed’s strong dollar policy. Read More...