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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: TobagoJack who wrote (77044)7/29/2011 5:16:46 PM
From: carranza21 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 219937
 
not much should happen, IMO.

1. a deal will be made sooner or later, before or after deadline. If before, gold falls a bit then proceeds per bull trend. If after, ditto. net, net, net= mostly a nonevent for gold and PMs, with a bullish bias.

2. the gold bull trend might accelerate upon downgrade. but look, ironically, for a flight to safety to USD after downgrade. It is not a pretty thing but not the ugliest of the bunch. Why? because the truly horrible currencies will be hit harder than usd. if USD goes up (seems terribly oversold at the moment), gold might suffer a bit, then keep on gentle bull trend.

3. downgrade therefore might precipitate direness (love that word) in euroland.

my best guess is that all mistakes, all chickens coming to roost, all pipers waiting to be paid, etc., are good for gold. no parabolic move either up or down, just a continuation of bull trend, which is ideal.



To: TobagoJack who wrote (77044)7/29/2011 6:24:49 PM
From: RJA_  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 219937
 
Did someone say QE3? Some hints:

Per bloomberg:

A credit-rating downgrade of U.S. Treasury securities caused by a failure to lift the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling would affect collateral pledged for loans.

The stalemate, if it extends past the Aug. 2 deadline, would probably create turmoil in financial markets, which could cause banks and other companies to hoard cash, William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said in an interview. If that happens, the Fed has the power to create new facilities to provide short-term funds to banks and other financial institutions, he said.

“The Fed could open the liquidity spigot,” Poole said.

MetLife Inc., the largest U.S. life insurance company, is hoarding cash as the debt deadline draws closer, officials said today. “We’ve added several billion dollars of excess cash, which we think is a prudent thing to do in an environment of uncertainty,” Steven Goulart, MetLife’s chief investment officer, said in a conference call with analysts.



To: TobagoJack who wrote (77044)7/29/2011 7:26:31 PM
From: 2MAR$  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 219937
 
Its been such a week of intense trading the volitility since this week's weakness with billion's in assets pulling out was the only natural course from last weekend's assurance the pigeons in DC were going to politic right up to the last moments of next tuesday . This pullback was measured each day as you saw them bounce it today still right off the 200ma again on the S&P like clockwork.... yet many earnings reports were met with some of the heaviest selling as this slowdown materialized in their guidance, some taking 12%, 20% & 30% hits this week . And many of these were already significantly down and now hammered even more on lowered capex spending & missed profit targets even with all the cost cutting .

(The GDP #'s today were no surprise & QE3 is as much a given as is the Greek default )

The inverse correlation between Ag rise and S&P fall while still significant suffered slight erosion with some renewed Eurozone sovereign concerns , lightly bolstered the USD so trimed Ag's ability to capitilize further on that risk aversion . The US dc-debate still has center stage & this fiasco still takes Ag one more step the better trade going into the weekend , so sleep well.

In tray :

" Two alternative scenarios are important to keep in mind....first, the US debt impasse has already sent billions in jittery capital out of asset allocation and into cash, which pressures the US Dollar higher. Second, ultra-low US borrowing costs are likely to be pressured higher as uncertainty on the deficit-reduction front persists, squashing inflation expectations and sapping demand for gold both as a hedge against rising prices and as an asset that yields nothing.

Easily expected this weeks fall , traded short as fast & furious where i could knowing money would be coming off even the blue chips but not enough to be worrisome or effect their rising trend status , pullbacks everywhere to be sure but todays bounce showed many still maintaining their bullish stance that might panic some but was showing me some strength amidst the weakness . Even the trade in Silver found me taking it short @ that $41/ resistance seeing it as the top which netted almost 20pts to the downside on the AGQ from $230 pivot top high . There's been as much hesitation in the PM's as there has been in the market in general here as it has priced in this last rise much of the worse case...and again the market bounced with such a bad GDP this am.

As much as one would think there's more grief in store for the market and those that missed got punished severely, they're still clinging on to this "soft patch" thesis as witnessed by many of the stronger issues still trading well within there uptrends & other many favorite stocks that did pull back , still got bounces off reasonable lower support just today . That leads to the idea that there will be something of a rally after the DC gets passed on tues as American politics & Washington's "democracy in the spotlight" reality show may be messy but in the end they get the job done . Of course after they've all had their turn waving their partisan flags ...we have all watched too many Disney movies to be otherwise .

A trillion here & a trillion there ...a $Trillion off military spending & a few $Trillion off entitlements and have no clue about the taxes ...but most importantly a few $Trillion the Fed gets to play with out of this ...and there's your QE3, bet they can't wait to get hands on.

So AG could do a quick trip up to 1650 or just bump around here at 1625-30 R & go back down to test lower supports around 1595 but think the long term trend still ok ?



To: TobagoJack who wrote (77044)7/29/2011 8:12:48 PM
From: 2MAR$  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 219937
 
Now 2am in france & you are down in the valley of sleep counting golden grape clusters , dreaming sweet Château d'Yquem dreams....

Possible fall after US labor day (sept 5th) after one more, near term market rally .
Message 27515598

When a bigger economy with greater structural and social problems, for example Spain, comes to the fore, it will be the actual defining moment of the European financial crisis. Going back to 2008, the first collapse of an investment bank - Bear Stearns in March 2008 - was easily absorbed by the markets and there was a strong rally since. It took until after summer of 2008 for the real big impact - Lehman Brothers and AIG - to filter through.

At 2% of the European economy, Greece was never the story. The drama around its rescue though
is: and therein lies the tale for the markets, as the good bard would say.

Dealing camels
The deal itself appears to have very little to commend for it: a 21% haircut for private bond holders triggering a selective default by Greece, a load of new money thrown by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, maintenance of an austerity program even as interest rates on new debt are reduced further to 3.5% and maturities are extended from seven years to 15 and even 30 years in some cases. Confusingly, the haircut for private bondholders will be constructed using multiple options presumably designed to suit the differing accounting regulations for investors holding the debt - the European Central Bank (ECB), commercial banks and others.

Confusingly, the deal seems to have missed all targets for constituents:

1. The ECB steadfastly demanded that there would be no default of any kind by Greece - this has been over-ruled by the deal;

2. Market investors were expecting a 50% haircut but will instead have a figure of less than half that imposed on them. However, this isn't the same as a settlement for credit default swap contracts, where prices could be decided later based on auctions;

3. Banks that were declared to have passed the stress tests last week by European authorities will, embarrassingly, have to fail them again, because the 21% haircut is higher than what was proposed by authorities at the time stress tests were promulgated;

4. New money has been made available for other European countries like Portugal as well as for any banks facing trouble through the offices of the European Financial Stability Facility; however, there is apparently not enough money in the kitty should any of the bigger countries, like Spain or Italy, face funding problems in the distant future;

5. It is not clear how the official assistance of 109 billion euros (US$157 billion) for Greece will be funded by European member states, some of whom (like Finland, the UK and Austria) have recently disavowed any further assistance for Greece;

6. The most chilling part of the eurozone statement is the assertion that the bailout for Greece is the "first and only" one of its kind. That is exactly the kind of statement that will be tested by market participants in coming months and years;

7. Lastly and most importantly, I see no evidence that the core issue of GREEK solvency has been addressed in the bailout. On the contrary, it appears that more debt is being heaped on a country that is already unwilling to bear the burden from its existing debt.

As the old joke goes, a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee. In this particular case, the committee has given us a truly bewildering rescue plan for Greece.

What is its likely near-term impact? There is a lot of cash lying around uninvested by different investors from hedge funds to sovereign wealth funds. It is possible that the rescue for Greece may prompt a strong summer rally - a capitulation trade of sorts that sees equity and commodity prices rising 25% or more in coming weeks on the notion that the GREEK plan is Europe's version of the QE2 (second quantitative easing) program that was pushed through in the United States by the Federal Reserve.

That said, the second bailout for Greece comes at a time when economic data from around the world isn't looking too peachy - whether you look at US unemployment or housing, German manufacturing, or worst of all, Chinese loan statistics.

In this particular case, we aren't even watching a new movie - just a dubbed version of a previously released one: namely the 2008 crisis I alluded to above; that time it was American and now it is being dubbed into GREEK with Latin subtitles.

A bailout of Greece falls into the category of an event that satisfies the near-term requirements of bullish investors, but leaves a sufficiently large number of questions unanswered for the more bearish folks not to completely throw in their towels.

Ergo, my expectation is now for a market rally going into the period after the US Labor Day (September 5), at which point a confluence of more sobering economic data and better market liquidity conditions will likely augur a crash.