Gary Tanashian's  Instablog

Excerpted from Notes From the Rabbit Hole #237:

Young FrankenMarket Lives

In failing to take a "healthy" correction to the equivalent of SPX 1350 to 1450 from the upside target zone of 1550 to 1590, the market is now running on policy and momentum. Hence we now dub thee Young FrankenMarket; Ben Bernanke's creation, sustained by government and legacy MBA debt, following Alan Greenspan's monster that was stitched together with artificially low interest rates that ultimately manifested in a huge commercial credit bubble.

Payrolls came in at 165,000 and an over bought, over loved* market popped its cork and exploded into blue sky. It had to be more than an okay 'jobs' report that did the trick. It was likely the combination of a still inflating Fed (and ECB, Europe popped hard as well) with some data that was good enough, but not so good as to call into question the Fed's systematic inflation regime. This is Bernanke's FrankenMarket, created by policy.

After making bearish patterns and/or negatively diverging from the Dow and S&P 500, the Russell 2000, Nasdaq 100 and Semiconductors all broke to new all-time (RUT) or recovery (NDX, SOX) highs on Friday. This left one notable holdout, the often-watched Transports. Since I normally do not give much weight to Dow Theory, I'll not do so now. But it should be noted that the Trannies are not at new highs… yet [edit: They are now].

So it appears that recent writing I have done about a topping process may have been incorrect or at least, early. The current period reminds me a lot of Greenspan's monster that emerged from the credit bubble early last decade, FrankenMarket as I called it in the first public article I ever wrote.

I remember wanting to be bearish [in 2004] because bearish seemed like the honest way to be. You cannot after all create (print) a bull market and a sound economy to go with it, can you? Well, yes and no.

Through interest rate manipulation, Greenspan created a bull market that really wasn't (as measured in gold, which stripped out inflation's effects and gave a 'real' and bearish view by the Dow-Gold ratio).

As noted previously, the But It Is What It Is website name came in large part due to my realization that the bull (in nominal stock prices) should not be fought as I looked around and saw (non-gold bug) perma-bears being blown up left and right. Any gold bull who was also bearish the stock market likely did just fine. But the play was long gold, and avoid or long the stock market.

Today we are challenged with a different monster. This one is more dangerous to the honest money contingent because it appears the golden shield has melted down and stopped protecting people from the obvious inflation being promoted in service to liquefying the banks, propping the economy and promoting a stock market bubble.

But here we have to take a step back and realize that it was 10+ years of bull bull bull for gold. Who are we to say what type of corrections should be suffered along the way? Stripping out the emotion, what we have is a really smart (I'd say diabolical in a way that is not entirely negative) policy maker who has somehow either engineered a 'best of all worlds' Goldilocks environment or taken the horseshoe out of his ass and hung it up on the wall of his well-appointed office.

I think it might be the latter, which in less crude terms means that it was just time for a technical adjustment. I hate to qualify the pain real people are suffering as an "adjustment", but think about it. The negative energy at the bottom of markets and the economy in 2008/2009 was incredible. This very letter reproduced the Time Magazine Depression 2.0 'breadlines' cover in support of its then bullish orientation.

Markets may need to work their way through an equal and opposite upside blow off before all is said and done. Who knows when that will come? It could be next week or it could be next year. But it is a near certainty that sentiment will play a big role.

For now, the trends are the trends, there are few signs that anyone is getting concerned about inflation and hence, the inflation continues. It is the Alice in Wonderland market:

"Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" -Alice

* AAII (Individual Inventors) had been an inexplicably skittish exception, as its members have fled to a bearish stance at the first sign of every recent minor correction. This had been a caveat to the bear case and the market will now try to suck them and any other holdouts in before a top is realized.

Notes From the Rabbit Hole has been following events with great interest since the Fed's QE regime kicked in to its new phase (III), and technical analysis has kept us on the right side. When I named the newsletter I did so with Alice's quote above in mind. Never has the idea of accepting what is contrary and counterintuitive been so important for everyone from speculators to savers to honest money advocates.

We remain intact first, and ready for opportunity - that "contrary-wise" could be big opportunity - second.

Biiwii.com, NFTRH, Twitter, Free eLetter

Excerpted from this week's edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 235:

Is Gold as an Investment Finished?

Before delving deeper into that question, perhaps we should see what the mainstream media thinks. In fairness to the MSM, we note there are plenty of articles on both sides of the debate. Yet there has been some media piling-on since the recent hard breakdown in gold. The aptly named Howard Gold explains:

The Case for Owning Gold Has Collapsed; Yellow metal could be headed much, much lower http://is.gd/h5KW6v.

Gold could be headed not much lower, but much much lower. This was written on April 18, when the value assigned to the monetary relic (AKA its nominal price) resided at $1391 per ounce. So be warned, Mr. Gold advises that gold could go much much lower. Gold bugs take heed; Mr. Gold himself has put the double 'much' whammy on you!

After critical support at 1524 was lost our first downside target of 1440 or so was sawn through like Balsa Wood. Okay fine. For those who micro manage every tick in the price of gold (I am not one), then here is the situation; the current little rebound must extend back up to and through the broken support level at 1440 or the next target in the low 1200's is up next.

See the weekly chart on page 3, which was produced 5 weeks ago in NFTRH 230. While not a favored outcome, recent events with gold's price are not surprising.

(click to enlarge)

Gold weekly chart

To review, the two potential points to watch for in the event of a breakdown from 1524 were the weekly EMA 200, which supported the 2008 decline and then the conservative measurement from the pattern breakdown, which is in the low 1200's, which also includes a visual support shelf from 2010. The less conservative measurement (the top at 1900 to 1524) would target around 1150.

So that is the price picture, now on to the fundamentals courtesy of Mr. Gold. From the article linked above:

"But gold's price could be headed much, much lower, said Campbell Harvey, a professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Harvey has looked at gold prices over the centuries, and concludes that it's still trading at lofty multiples of inflation."

In the article linked above there is another link where you can download the research of Mr. Harvey and colleague Claude Erb - currently making the rounds like a good gold bug horror movie - that talks about gold's "real" price as measured by CPI and GDP. Boiling it all down, gold is historically over valued as compared to measures of the effects of inflation on consumer prices and relative to GDP.

We will steer clear of the debate about government number fudging, because it is a battle that is not necessary. The Federal Reserve and many of its counterparts around the globe are inflating, or trying their damnedest to inflate. They are using debt instruments to create money out of nowhere and pumping it into big banks, which are supposedly expected to release the money out to the public.

This could one day manifest in an out of control inflation problem (as measured by the lagging effects that Harvey and Erb call inflation, or resolve into a more intense deflationary phase as the thing that is just a whiff now gains momentum and swallows the entire spectrum of inflated assets in one big gulp of illiquidity.

The economy has depended on inflationary policy since the age of Inflation onDemand began under Alan Greenspan's oversight in and around 2000.

Ask yourself this; why are they inflating? Why are they printing money at a furious pace if the GDP is real and sustainable? The answer is likely because they know that the financial system is a leveraged thing that must not be allowed to start deflating because if it starts deleveraging, it is not going to stop until the books are cleared.

Gold vs. Commodities, What is the Message?

(click to enlarge)

Gold-CCI Ratio, weekly chart

The authors noted above measure gold's 'real' price in CPI and GDP. Here we have always measured it relative to the commodity complex, which is generally positively correlated to the global economy. Above is gold vs. the CCI commodity index.

I had originally thought that a decline to the lower moving average would come with a continued economic bump, stock bull market and inflation-fueled commodity bounce. But instead, gold has tanked vs. commodities even as a deflationary pull starts to take hold with signs of economic deceleration, commodities down and the stock market potentially in some kind of a topping process.

Yet the 'real' price is still in a secular uptrend because the ratio has held above another parameter point we noted as important. If the blue arrow is confirmed by turning green one day, the message will continue to be a secular era of economic contraction, which has thus far been fought tooth and nail by inflationary policy. That is and has been the case for gold since day one. Not the case most gold bugs root for, which is inflationary effects, the likes of which are used as data points by Harvey and Erb. See?

Of course Harvey and Erb scare the gold "community" because a majority of the "community" sees gold as a hedge against higher prices. If the above chart breaks down and makes a lower low to the spring of 2011 (the height of the last commodity/inflation blowout) then we may have to admit Bernanke wins, Draghi wins, BoJ, China Central Planning and all other inflators win. They will have managed to create sustainable economies literally out of thin air.

The alternative to that is hyperinflation, where an asset grab of epic proportions could engage with gold under performing things you can actually eat, keep warm with and use for fuel. This asset grab would come out of a debased monetary system.

More realistically however, we might look for the real price of gold to gain support in its secular uptrend. This would see economic contraction and by extension, further decline in commodities and stocks markets. We have noted all along that the nominal gold price can decline in this environment, so people should know why they own the thing. Also, getting out of the 'death of the dollar' cult might be wise as well.

The USD, as long as implied confidence in our leaders remains intact, may be pulled upward with the real price of gold as a contraction phase bites harder. This is the world's reserve currency in which a majority of global transactions are settled. As long as this remains the case, there will be claims on Uncle Buck. USD, as of the moment, is liquidity within the system. Gold by the way, is liquidity outside the system.

The average gold bug's worst enemy is… the inflation tout. It is not the government or the big banks. It is the individual's expectations of a lump of shiny metal. If they have not gotten this simple concept yet, after the recent damage, I am afraid they will never get it. And they will puke up their gold, which failed to protect them from the dreaded inflation that wasn't.

Bottom Line

The "dreaded inflation" is measured in the mainstream by prices (CPI, etc.), not policy-making actions. Gold is a barometer and the pressure it would indicate could be inflationary or deflationary.

If one day you see the gold price skyrocket, then be prepared for a coming (lagging) inflation problem that would indeed eventually show up in prices. This could propel commodities, resources, productive economies and even stock markets to new heights.

If on the other hand gold just hangs around or declines, yet the 'real' price as measured in commodities rises again, the backdrop would be one of continued economic contraction and declining asset prices.

The third alternative is the least likely; gold hangs around or declines and yet the 'real' price loses its secular uptrend. This would indicate a sustainable economic expansion, created by inflationary policy has engaged. Thus far, inflationary policy has served to build in distortions that subject the system to extreme liquidations. That right there is the continuing case for gold - and for the time being I might add - cash, lots of it.

Okay now, that's the theory. I have got a technical report to write, so lets get to it. NFTRH 235 then goes on to review the technical pictures of the precious metals, precious metals stocks, commodities and stock markets in an unbiased manner. This has kept the analysis on the right side of the markets throughout recent dynamic events. If you would like a hard-working service that does whatever it takes to be prepared for what the market throws at us, consider a subscription to NFTRH.

Biiwii.com, Notes From the Rabbit Hole, Twitter, Free eLetter

That was the question I asked myself after being 100% cash into the last hour yesterday and seeing the bottom fall out on the gold stocks once again. Classic trading methodology teaches that you do not try to catch a falling knife. 'Screw classic trading methodology' thought I, 'I'm taking some positions', which ended up being in the gold and silver bullion fund CEF (now selling at a discount), a few individual items I consider to be of relative quality and the leveraged NUGT in a high risk trading account.

The above was noted in an update to NFTRH subscribers in the last hour and certainly was not a call to action. It was just a note from a market manager who had been updating subscribers all along this frustrating journey since the gold stocks lost critical support in November. With that final plunge yesterday afternoon, something bullish welled up inside me.

But as usual, the chart takes out the human element (e.g. "something bullish welled up inside me"), so let's look at the one for GDX, as it shows an awe inspiring picture of volume.

(click to enlarge)

GDX daily

I won't recount the whole agonizing history of the breakdown from the September 'QE' euphoria. The busy chart does that for me. What is important now is the series of 'rolling capitulations' that manifested in Bear Flags, which in turn served to reset over sold status just enough to continue a series of plunges.

Yesterday's impulsive mega volume drop blew the Bollinger Bands to their widest separation in maybe forever. RSI came to an opposite condition to its very over bought status from September. While on this subject, my stance in September/October was that gold stocks were over bought and in need of a 'healthy' correction. That is what TA said. I was wrong about the "healthy" part and was proven so when the red dotted neckline broke down. We are going to be wrong, but it is what we do with that knowledge (deny it or face it?) that is important. When that critical support failed, we labeled the correction "abnormal" and in need of constant risk management.

Which brings us to today. I may be right or I may be wrong in having bought the puke-fest close yesterday. I have plenty of dry powder (too much, if a real rally is forthcoming), but these are the times we wait for people. That chart above has finally woken up with capitulation after a 6 month grind.

A long standing target of HUI 250-260 was hammered yesterday into the close. There are targets lower in the low 200′s (secular trend line by linear chart) and 100 (measurement off a huge topping pattern). So this is all just a trade until it proves otherwise. But look at that chart again. People are being driven out with extreme cruelty and force. This is a picture of massive pain and tumult. Sometimes you just gotta buy that. As noted to subscribers, this will be undone quickly if proven wrong.

Biiwii.com, Notes From the Rabbit Hole, Twitter, Free eLetter

Disclosure: I am long CEF.

Additional disclosure: Long CEF at time of yesterday's close.