ICouldBeWrong

Japanese Yen ETF Stands Tall Amid Global Carnage

Closed my long airlines short gold trade for now. Taking a holiday.

Golden Age For Japanese Financials Ahead - Barron's

Nice article.

More coverage of Japanese equities with minimal foreign exposure would be appreciated.

Japanese Yen ETF Stands Tall Amid Global Carnage

phdinsuntanning: Thank you. I'm amazed anyone noticed.

stockcharts.com/h-sc/u...=$XAL:$GOLD&p=D&am...
75% profit in 10 days.

Actually I'm very ignorant about airlines. I'm just researching their hedge positions now.

I must try to be more humble, stay flexible. Time to take profit or not? Something surprising is always around the corner. 12 hours until the currency markets open.

Gold / Silver Ratio Tops 80 to 1

SB-tiger: I was selling gold at 917 and buying at 838. I own physical so have no problem selling futures. I will probably sell more if I see a good setup.

There are a few reasons I did this. See my previous comments for details.

And please don't misunderstand I think gold is a good long term investment. But either A) the stock market holds above its 2002 lows and now isn't a good time to buy gold as fear levels have already maxed out, or B) the stock market falls below 2002 lows and we're all in big trouble and you might be better off buying long life food and a gun instead of gold.

I think A) is the most probable outcome by far.

Japanese Yen ETF Stands Tall Amid Global Carnage

Well very lonely in the Yen but terrific profits.

I guess it's time to start rotating out of the Yen and into a short gold / long airlines position now.

Japanese Yen ETF Stands Tall Amid Global Carnage

Aaah a combined central bank rate cut that's a risk to shorting aud/jpy

"and get ready for a big '87 style finale crash when the markets open again Wednesday New York time"

Well maybe not now, have to wait and see.

Japanese Yen ETF Stands Tall Amid Global Carnage

No replies so I'll explain further. The Fed is not monetizing the debt, they are not 'printing money' like many on the internet think (especially gold bugs). Instead they are borrowing money from foreign countries, Japan, China, Saudi etc. They have been borrowing a lot for many years.

It's like someone getting a credit card and living off large cash advances. Until the limit is reached cash is freely available and inflation is high. But when the limit is reached (now) cash becomes extremely scarce. So USD will continue to rocket higher against most currencies, the JPY being perhaps the sole exception.

Now the Japanese are very wealthy (unlike the Japanese govt which is in debt), and are invested all over the world. They aren't reliant on commodity exports or in truth even manufactured products they are simply wealthy. So a worldwide depression and falling commodity prices won't hurt them so bad, in fact it will help them relative to other countries. Additionally as foreign markets go down (and get ready for a big '87 style finale crash when the markets open again Wednesday New York time) the Japanese will repatriate their wealth out of foreign currencies back into Yen.

There are many other factors too, Yen carry trade unwinding, Japanese interest rates at rock bottom, see also Jim "everyone should own some Yen" Rogers.

So a crash is relatively good for the Japanese. (And you can work out other things like during the big crash coming this week, gold may rise but afterwards it will fall like other commodities have been as panic subsides and the USD stays surprisingly strong).

Can anyone see any risk to say going short the AUD/JPY pair? Currency controls? Anything else? The daily interest is a high that's the only downside I can see, wait until USD/JPY breaks 100 any day/hour now. Then the Yen will really soar.

www.reuters.com/articl...

Japanese Yen ETF Stands Tall Amid Global Carnage

Does anyone have any critical comments about the Yen?

I moved out of hard assets and into the Yen when I realized Bernanke isn't monetizing the debt, and that the debt won't be monetized until the administration is changed if ever (which is very bullish for US dollar).

Financials Leading General Market Again

Schweizer could be right.

Anyway I agree that financials are leading the market again, but XLF is now leading the market down, not up!

Metals Manipulation - Or Simply Deleveraging?

Nice article.

Thanks for the great 321gold.com website.

Crude Oil at Bearish Extremes

I find this article interesting and is certainly food for thought. Personally I'm not trading heavily at the moment and are restricting myself to light positions only.

Long crude I'm ok with, and I wouldn't be surprised if oil keeps on outperforming gold, (I think this makes sense if we've reached peak oil). But I think there are better shorting opportunities than gold, especially now after the steep fall in gold (1033/770~=733/550). I prefer to short XLF, the equities bear market leader, Historically gold has correlated with commodities, and commodities have correlated with oil. Oil up, will drag gold up.

I'm not sure about using the COT reports, personally I've never been able to reliably profit from them.

Time To Cover Those Housing Shorts

Thanks for this article Cam. I appreciate the time you put into it, and are following your work with interest.

John: I don't think Cam is calling a bottom in real estate, because under the homebuilders chart he writes 'Warning: I am not calling a real estate bottom!', and later writes 'Meredith Whitney, who correctly called the credit and housing crisis, is also forecasting further downside in housing because of tightening credit conditions:'.

Instead Cam appears to be calling the beginning of a bottoming process in homebuilders.

Getting More Constructive on Crude Oil

Apart from the weird dates on the Heebner chart (anyone got a link to a correct chart?), very nice article. And Hui congrats on your timely $150 top call in oil, well done.

I also wonder if the recent period of global warming is entirely natural, was possibly caused by solar activity and will give way to a global cooling period some time in the next decade.

People who are skeptical of peak oil should read Hubbert's 1956 paper nuclear energy and the fossil fuels (google for it). Honestly it's simply a question of when not if.

But even though I believe in peak oil, and worry about resource wars I'm not a doomer. I believe where this is a will there is a way and we will not only solve our energy crisis but eventually (no pain no gain) move forward to a future of cheap and abundant energy. (See my previous comments on Polywell fusion here on seeking alpha).

Regarding trading. On Friday I went short S&P500 futures, short XLF, long gold, silver, oil futures.

Especially the oil futures were risky, and there's every possibility I was too early. But this invasion of Georgia by Russia this weekend might help my case. And I can't buy this US dollar rally, the real resistance is 78-80 on the dollar index, the housing market is still going down, and bad surprises keep on coming out of the financials.

The xlf broke down on Thursday out of a month long linear uptrend, retraced on Friday but couldn't break through resistance from the break down. S&P500 now at 50 day moving average resistance, at round number resistance (1300), at triple top resistance (1290-1300), and is in a month long bearish rising wedge formation.

Maybe I'm wrong I'm trading light position sizes with carefully chosen stops.

Gold: Buy Signal Approaching

Skeptik: Thanks for the reuters quote. Interesting, I'm going to have to think on that.

Jake2: Personally I like zealllc.com. Their Long Valuation Waves series is excellent, also Real Rates and Gold is good, amongst many others.

But I differ from zealllc.com in that I consider deflation to be a more serious threat than them.

Gold: Buy Signal Approaching

"A sign that gold has finally found a bottom is a sharp recent rise in India’s physical demand for the metal."

Can you provide any links to allow verification of this statement?