Thai Guru's Gold und Silber ... (Informationen und Vermutungen)

Ulfur

Schön dass auch Du den weg in dieses interessante und technisch "up to date" Gold Forum gefunden hast.

Freue mich sehr darüber

@Board Mod Warren

Sorry, habe Dir zur Silber Preis Manipulation noch nicht Antworten können. Werd`s morgen ausführlich nachholen.

Karl

Do wo ich lebe, gibt's leider keine Buchhandlung um die Ecke.
Habs mir fest vorgenommen es nächstens zu lesen. Bestellt habe ich es bereits schon.

Zur Zeit lese ich gerade ein sehr interessantes Buch von Günter Hannich

Börsenkrach und Welt-Wirtschafts-Kriese. Der Weg in den 3. Weltkrieg.

Erschienen im KOPP Verlag

ISBN Nummer 3-930219-34-4

Tschüss bis morgen

ThaiGuru

Karl

Habe kurz einen kleinen Ausschnitt für Dich gescannt!

Hoffe Günter Hannich wird es mir nicht allzu übel nehmen.

[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.goldseek.com/news/LemetropoleCafe/lmpc.jpg]

http://www.lemetropolecafe.com

March 12 - Gold $395 down $5.20 - Silver $7.03 down 11 cents

Gold Shares Storm Back Late In Stellar Fashion

Zitat

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment...Eric Butterworth (American Writer)

GO GATA!!!

What a crummy day, although not as bad as it could have been. Last evening gold was more than $2 higher and silver climbed 11 cents at one point. By the time I woke up both were lower and soon to be trashed. Surely The Working Group on Financial Markets went into full operation to prop up a precarious stock market and a firming gold market. Who knows whether al-Qaeda blew up the trains in horrific fashion or not. The line coming out of the UN and Spain was that is was not them. The fact the Basque terrorist group has killed 8 people over two years versus 4600 killed by al-Qaeda seems to have been left out of the blame accusation. What is important is the spin. Since an al-Qaeda bombing would suggest there will be more horrors to come and unnerve financial markets, it couldn’t be them, at least for now, until its markets effects die down.

Certainly gold cannot be allowed to go up in this Nervous Nellie time either. The US made sure of that last night and again today.

A market which is not allowed to go up must come down. This is what the hedge funds decided today. They were massive gold sellers with the dealers actually buying once gold broke about $5. The hedge funds have been dumping their tech stocks, gold, gold shares, various other commodities and their foreign currency positions.

One of these trades was the Aussie carry trade. Money was borrowed in the US at cheap interest rates and invested in much higher interest rate bearing financial instruments in Australia. All was fine while the Aussie dollar was rallying. However, it dropped from around 80 to close to 72 before closing today at 73.21, down .66 . This drop has caused a number of the funds to jettison their positions.

The dollar surged. However, it closed well off its highs of 89.44 at 89.09, up .60. The euro fell all the way to 121.75 before returning to 122.70, down .89.

One might ask if the Saudis and Chinese are buying why does gold get bashed so easily. The answer is very simple. These sophisticated buyers can read the markets and see what The Gold Cartel is doing. They want to buy as low as possible. On days like these, they will step back and wait for the market to come to them on the downside. The Gold Cartel is managing gold for the near term. These big buyers are accumulating for the long term. Gold trashings, such as the one we got today, are what they wait for.

To extend this line of thinking, gold is going from weak hands into strong hands according to one of my bullion dealer sources. Contrary to past times. this dealer is getting calls to buy on breaks like today. In those years past he would usually receive panicky orders to sell. More and more of the public can see what is going on in US financial land and want in.

There was one HUGE seller late in the day who sold thousands of April gold contracts. They were all bought by cabal forces: Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

The gold open interest rose 369 contracts to 236,632, while the silver open interest rose 560 contracts to 236,632. March fell 45 contracts to 460.

Silver sold off in sympathy with the gold rout, falling all the way to $6.90 before recovering. Rumor has it Mexico is preparing to make delivery of 3 to 5 million ounces through Englehard.

There were 10 deliveries with Deutsche Bank taking 2 of them.

Of note: 1,167,112 silver ounces were taken out of the Comex warehouses, mostly in the Eligible category. This is the first sizeable drawdown we have seen recently and just want we want to occur to validate the MIDAS input Europeans have come to the Comex to secure physical silver.

Silver closed 13 cents off its low. This is not a sign of a market in trouble. All silver did was break out, then go back to check support. Matter of fact, it made a new weekly high close:

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/SV/W

May soybean meal closed in new high ground at $292.70. The beat goes on.

[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.goldseek.com/news/LemetropoleCafe/lmpc.jpg]

The John Brimelow Report

TGIF

Friday, March 12, 2004

Indian ex-duty premiums: AM $2.94, PM $3.14, with world gold at $400 and $400.30. Below legal import point. India seems not to be in a gold-buying mood at present. Silver too, appeared to below legal import point with world silver at around $7.20

TOCOM volume slipped 20% to equal only 25,343 Comex lots. Open interest edged up the equivalent of 227 Comex lots, the active contract went out up 10 yen, and world gold was 30 cents above the NY close. (NY yesterday traded 38,794 lots; open interest rose 369 contracts.)

A curious post- NY close rally to $403 yesterday was, once again, repressed by dealer selling during the early Asian day: Mitsui claims it came from Australian producers attracted by the $A- weakness enhanced local gold price. In any event, ready selling above $400 this week has blocked gold from responding to surging trade deficits, faltering stock markets and apparent terrorism. Gold’s friends will probably have to wait for the physical market to meet this challenge.

JB

[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.goldseek.com/news/LemetropoleCafe/lmpc.jpg]

http://www.lemetropolecafe.com

CARTEL CAPITULATION WATCH

The US stock market roared back after two difficult days. Has to have been a technical bounce from an oversold condition. The fundamentals sure didn’t improve overnight. The DOW gained 111 to 10,240 and the DOG leaped 40 to 1984.

Ah, maybe this was the news which excited Wall Street?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The American deficit in trade and financial flows with the rest of the world exploded to a record 541.8 billion dollars in 2003, the government said.
The shortfall swelled from a gap of 480.9 billion dollars the previous year, the Commerce Department said.
The current account -- tracking trade, income from investments and overseas workers, and one-way transfers such as foreign aid -- was pushed further into the red by a 127.5-billion-dollar gap in the final quarter.

–END-

GATA’s Mike Bolser:

Hi Bill:

The Fed added $9 Billion in repurchase agreements today March 12, 2004. This action was matched by a similar $9 Billion expiration so the repo pool remained unchanged.

The Fed continues to signal its intention to keep the DOW down near the well-established upwardly moving 30-day ma trend line (green trace). Importantly, they have NOT added a flurry of repos as one might have expected if they were concerned over a falling DOW because they weren't worried. Indeed, they act satisfied that the DOW is where it is--just about on trend. The repo 30-day moving average is still rounding out a bottom, getting ready to head back up, but not too quickly.

My 11,750 DOW prediction (as measured by its 30-day ma) on Labor Day 2004 stands intact.

Without access to the repo metric, one would surely be whip-sawed all over creation searching for fundamental economic reasons to help explain the DOW's actions. The principal force acting on the DOW is the government's intervention through their primary dealer's, repo funded, futures market operations. Without this force the DOW would fall.

My chart site has been updated this morning at:

http://www.pbase.com/gmbolser/interventional_analysis

Mike

Chuck checked in mid-day:
If gold and the shares do well like last week, it quickly retraces. But not the market. We almost never have a bad Friday.

Let's see if gold digs in here as the squeeze on the dollar continues. The liquidation continues in the Rydex, if the stocks are up or down. It could get scary. Chuck

I asked Chuck if he wouldn’t mind explaining the Rydex:

The Rydex is a series of funds that investors can go in and out of to fit their trading inclinations. There are a series of different ones, but the Precious Metals one is about the only vehicle that traders can use to play short-term movements in the stocks. Thye give the flow and the asset value every day, although it's not always easy to interpret, but when there is a large jump without the shares necessarily going up it can be negative, and conversely when there is a liquidation such as has been going on the past month, it can be positive.

In essence, it measures hot money and probably momentum players. So this liquidation has been ongoing. I'll send you the charts and you can look at them.

My take is that the shares will do relatively better than the metal as they should on the bottom turning point. I think we are seeing what I had thought, some weakness as the market begins its nasty descent. We should start to see relative strength here, I hope. Chuck

Houston’s Dan Norcini:

Hey Bill:

Well, it's a Friday - what did we expect? Maybe next week we should close out on Thursday evening and go play golf on Friday or simply sleep in.

Apparantly the hedge funds decided that the dollar is now a safe place to park their money! Go figure! They are now unwinding massive long Aussie/short U.S. dollar and long Sterling/short U.S. dollar having decided that the interest rate differential is no longer important and the carry trade is finished. They also unloaded the Swiss Franc after yesterday's safe haven play there on account of that terrible bombing in Spain. That bled over into the Euro pushing the dollar up across the board. Of course, the knee jerk reaction to a stronger dollar on the Comex by the ninnies who lurk there took is as predictable as cold weather in January. Doesn't matter that today's release of the year end current account deficit figure for 2003 came in at a mind boggling -$541.8 billion, a paltry increase over last year's whopper of -$480.8 billion (this last phrase "paltry increase" is of course pure sarcasm).

What is happening now is a pure money game and has nothing to do with the real world fundamentals.

It is repositioning and unwinding of positions that have been put on over the last six months as a result of "black box" signals. Until this purely technical play in finished and these hedge funds decide what they are going to do next, the currency markets and thus gold is not going to make a lot of sense to those who have studied to learn the fundamentals. It does seem to me however that we should be reaching an end to this repositioning move fairly soon as we have had some huge swings in the currencies of late that indicate very sizeable adjustments taking place.

With the bond market now either factoring in a rate cut or at the bare minimum a definite hold on any U.S. interest rate hike this year, no one in their right mind would initiate long term dollar long positions. The dollar is still being supported only by short covering. If we can believe the bond market, and that is getting harder to do each day since it too is so distorted and skewered by the constant intervention, the abysmal return on the U.S. dollar is going to go no where soon. I am beginning to wonder if we are going to see mortgage holders moving to institute further long hedges as the risk of mortgage prepays is rising as mortgage rates look set to fall again.

My what atractive reasons to buy the U.S. Dollar - the Dow , Nasdaq and S&P 500 look to be rolling over; the interest rate on the long bond is pathetic and heading lower, the printing press is still running wide open even as the velocity of money falls, the current account deficit is over 1/2 trillion dollars and rising; the federal government shows no sign of even attempting to get its fiscal house in order by reducing runaway spending, commodity prices are still on a tear; and U.S. personal and corporate indebtedness at all levels shows not the faintest sign of improving. Good luck dollar bulls is all I can say.

Dan
dnorcini@earthlink.net

More from Dan on the Comex open interest:

Not much to report on in the way of Commitment of Traders for gold report this week. Liquidation continues with open interest down some 7,000 contracts from last Tuesday's report.

What is worth mentioning is that the drive from the $388 area on up to the $406 area was accomplished solely by the funds this time around as they began to rebuild long positions and those funds which had put on shorts were forced to cover. The small specs bailed out from both longs and shorts last week.

As of yesterday however, open interest is nearly back where it was last week. So on Wednesday and Thursday of this week we had new positions being put on by players. Exactly which category is hard to say right now but judging from the fact that the price action was to the downside in gold on both of those days, it is quite possible that some of those same funds who covered last week and on Monday and Tuesday this week, came right back in and reshorted along with the cartel.

The commercial category lifted a sizeable number of long positions, 12,449 to be exact, while the usual culprits making up the goon squad added 3,582 new shorts no doubt intending to cap the rally at the $406 area. I can only surmise that perhaps the commercial longs had secured the physical gold they needed in the cash market at sub $395 levels and no longer needed the upward price protection that the long hedge they had initiated would have provided. That category had been increasing new long positions for the previous two weeks and of this last Tuesday's report are now back exactly to where they were when gold was trading beneath $400 - a perfect place to establish a long hedge if you need the physical for manufacturing and are worried that the price might get away from you to the upside. That would jive with the anecdotal reports we have of strong physical offtake below $395. They would purchase the actual gold they need and then lift the long hedges at that point no longer needing them to manage risk. That is a guess but it seems plausible judging from the price action and the unusually large drop in commercial longs at these levels.

After today's drubbing of gold, I am expecting to see further liquidation but will be pleasantly surprised if funds have increased their longs in addition to that group of funds which still likes the short side of gold at these levels who as I said previously, might have plowed right back in on the short side.

Best,
Dan

From The King Report:

PPI Held Hostage, Day 22

Thursday’s retail sales report was the usual soft data that is uglier upon dissection, with incredulous components. Ex-autos, retail sales are flat. This is horrendous given the large tax refunds. The IRS reports the average tax refund so far is $2,182, up 4.4% from 2002…How in the heck are gasoline sales down in February, given the record prices? The upward revision in January retail sales is due to gasoline service station sales being revised from 2% to 2.8%. Merrill Lynch’s Amy Dickenson in her report "A Mixed Retail Sales Report But Clothing & Restaurants Are On the Leader Board (all dressed up with somewhere to go!)" notes housing-related sales are falling as are e-tailing sales. Ms. Dickenson also addresses questionable numbers: "…what was surprising was the 2.7% pop in motor vehicle sales which was the strongest performance in a year, even though we know from the previously released unit data that they were up less than 2% in the face of stepped-up discounting."

Speaking of bogus government economic statistics - Last week we noted Georgia’s low unemployment numbers and reasoned that the military buildup helped them. The Atlanta Constitution Journal reports that upon state review of actual jobs, the preliminary BLS jobs data is horribly wrong. The AJC’s Michael Kanell reports, "…2003 was tougher for job seekers than state officials had believed: Metro Atlanta ended the year with about 84,200 fewer jobs than first thought. Instead of enjoying an increase of 67,900 jobs during the year — which appeared to make the area a national leader in job creation — metro Atlanta actually lost 16,800 jobs, the Georgia Labor Department said Wednesday…One reason for the huge swing is that many companies that had gone out of business weren't counted in the initial survey, said John Lawrence, assistant director of work force information and analysis for the state Labor Department." This is precisely Alliance Capital’s Joe Carson warning about ISM’s bullish readings. The article also cites problems with BLS sampling methodology and notes the same evidence we have cited to refute econobulls: "Atlanta's apparent job growth had put it among the nation's leaders, yet other indicators — like income growth, commercial real estate vacancies and tax collections — had lagged."

http://www.ajc.com/business/co…business/0304/11jobs.html

The debate about payroll-household and accounting for self-employed or small business growth is moot because income data, IRS data and individual state data show little or no income growth. It is income that’s germane. There are numerous low or non-paying positions, especially re-tooled self-employed consultants and independent contractors. And as we’ve been preaching, as soft as income growth has been, in reality it’s worse because bubbles severely skew income distribution.

-END-

An example of how Price Action Makes Market Commentary – from Forbes today:

"There was general disappointment in the market that they (precious metals) didn't react to the terrorism in Spain." said Leonard Kaplan, president of Prospector Asset Management. "Gold could not muster any bid after the terror incident, at most up $1 or $2; and this morning, being a Friday with the dollar strong, it got sold."

The Gold Cartel has been smothering gold for years on days such as this, setting the trading tone and muscling bullion around. Of course gold doesn’t react like it should. The 500 pound Gorilla sits all over it at times like this.

On the GSE’s:

Given the recent commentary by Fed Chairman Greenspan, and various members of congress, the systemic risk GSE mortgage backed securities pose to the overall system is enormous. The greatest minds in finance today such as Warren Buffet and Bill Gross have echoed these sentiments. The Treasury Secretary, Chairman of The Federal Reserve System, and the White Houses Economic Advisor have all recently distanced themselves from a moral obligation of the U.S. government to back Agency securities. This moral obligation has been implicit in the marketplace, and allowed organizations like Freddie to obtain lower borrowing costs. In addition to lower borrowing costs, reduced capital requirements compared to traditional lenders provide a significant advantage to Freddie and other GSEs. It is my belief by Monday, March 15th, Fannie will be forced to face up to 25 billion in derivatives loses that were not accurately reported in accordance with FAS 133, or GAAP practices. Fannie's recent public spat with the Financial Times is indicative of the difficult climate GSEs will face in the upcoming years due to heightened congressional oversight and a potential higher interest rate environment driven by inflation in the system. The magnitude of the size of Freddie and Fannies Mortgage Backed Security portfolio, primarily consisting of long term low yielding securities creates substantial interest rate risk to the GSEs. The unprecedented 40 year low interest rates we have seen over the last several years and record levels of home purchases and refinancing activity has amplified substantial interest rate and credit risk. There is no counter party on the face of the earth except for the federal government, who can ultimately honor any type of OTC derivative transaction required to hedge the interest rate risk undertaken by the GSEs. The government’s ability to introduce new money into the system would allow it to be the only counter-party capable of facilitating a transition to a higher interest rate environment. I believe ultimately a 350 basis point move up in interest rates, will place enough stress on the system for the government to have to intervene.

Marcus Rodriguez

Silver input:

Hi Bill

A friend has been using monex to get some exposure to silver. I recommended against them because of their ridiculous fee structure. Anyway he was in silver at 6.5 got a call to get out at 6.95 from monex churner so he did. He tried to get back in following kitco prices. He thought he was in and called. He was told that monex has a *** .10 cent spread *** on silver between bid and ask. Monex runs a commodity bucket shop and they are getting scared of being short silver.

Steve Silver

Dear Bill,

Yesterday I have confirmed those e-mail rumors about an individual Canadian who very recently purchased and took delivery of 8-million ounces of silver bullion. I don't want to say anymore, but I can assure you that this delivery is about to occur.

Best regards,

Neal Krull

ECU Silver was halted yesterday. The TSX Exchange said ECU’s website was not compliant with their norms.

The gold shares surged back late in the day with the XAU only losing .35 to 98.53 and the HUI dropping .94 to 222.04. Most of the up market action occurred in the last 20 minutes to trading. The HUI low was 215.07, so you can see what kind of comeback there was. The rounding HUI bottoming formation continues to build.

Considering who bought the gold close, the new weekly silver high close and the formidable late gold share rally, it bodes well for next week. My bet is gold takes out $406 and silver approaches $7.50.

GATA BE IN IT TO WIN IT!

War Rally Failing

This week was a fascinating multi-pronged anniversary in the equity markets. Exactly one year ago the war rally in US equities launched when Washington, DC began its operation to annex Iraq by bombing Baghdad on live television.

The war rally turned out to be one of the most extraordinary equity rallies witnessed in decades. Its magnitude and duration were unprecedented in many ways, especially when considering the blisteringly high valuations from which it erupted out of the blue a year ago this week.

The war rally proved especially vexing to contrarians, as many including I lost big bets on the short side last year when the rally powered relentlessly higher in brazen defiance of many proud and usually rock-solid sentiment indicators. Extreme greed not witnessed since the terminal months of the Great Bubble of the late 1990s fueled the powerful rally while sentiment indicators screamed to stay short the entire way up.

While we on the contrarian and bear side were gutted and filleted like fish by the war rally, the bulls rejoiced, and rightfully so. They are always happy to point out that the war rally was really technically a cyclical bull. And they boldly made the claim that the Great Bear of the early 2000s was rendered extinct by the war rally, even though general stocks never traded below 20x earnings or above 2% in dividend yields last March, traditional long-term topping, not bottoming levels.

Battered and bruised, we contrarians had no choice but to grudgingly accept the surreal and unnatural war rally, carefully biding our time and waiting for the popular euphoria to fade, as it always does. Even today a year later we still see rampantly overvalued markets trading near historical bubble extremes in P/E and dividend-yield terms, drenched in naked greed.

For some, particularly perma-bulls, twelve months of war rallying or cyclical bullying is enough to convince them that we are sojourning through a brave New Era where valuations are irrelevant, where buying any stock at any price at any time for any reason is always a bargain. We contrarians sure don’t buy this happy rationalization though!

This week marked a second, and far more important, anniversary as well. Four years ago, the US stock markets blasted to nosebleed bubble extremes in valuations never before witnessed in US history, even in 1929. Four years ago this week the bulls, just like today, happily argued that valuations were meaningless since a brave New Era was upon us. Who needs those dusty old laws of market history anyway when the markets are soaring, right?

And four years ago this week, history finally caught up with the bulls with a vengeance and mercilessly started crushing them like bugs for their irrational exuberance. The New Era of unlimited eternal gains of the late 1990s proved to be as mythical and silly as all the other New Era promises in the centuries past. Turns out that valuations really did matter after all! Today, we are facing a similar reckoning in the unbelievable war rally of the past year.

The spectacular war rally of 2003 once again defied rational valuations, blasting into stellar greed extremes never before witnessed in modern history, including in 1999 and early 2000, according to some elite sentiment indicators. As such, we contrarians could not rely on valuation or even sentiment to help us discern when the bullish stampede was running out of steam. These limitations left us to consider the war rally in purely technical price terms. Bring in the charts!

Finally on this anniversary week the long-cryptic charts have at last spoken, and not even the perma-bulls can argue with these startling developments. The mighty war rally is failing! All of the elite US indices are entering accelerating technical decay curves on weak internals and increasing selling pressure. The implications of the potential end of the war rally for speculators and investors are quite profound.

Our charts this week delve into this increasingly obvious technical peril in the general US stock markets. They compare the war-rally-to-date gains in the NASDAQ, NASDAQ 100, S&P 500, and Dow 30. As I will discuss below, the speculative premium inherent in the US markets is fading fast, suggesting that popular greed has hit the wall and a sentimental sea change is well underway.

In this first chart of the entire war rally, the technical decay in the past couple weeks is very evident with the plunging rally-to-date gains lines. Note the shrinking gap between the hyper-speculative tech-stock indices and the far more conservative blue-chip indices. Popular speculative fervor is fading fast as the war rally rolls over and fails.

[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/img2004/Zeal031204A.gif]

With NASDAQ war-rally gains approaching 70% and blue-chip gains near 45%, there is no disputing the majesty and power of the US stock markets in the past year. Whether you were on the right or wrong side of this particular market movement as a speculator, this rally was certainly spectacular by any standard.

One of the war rally’s distinguishing characteristics that intrigued me the most was the large divergence between the far more speculative technology indices and the less risky blue-chip indices. As you can see above, the tech indices led the war rally’s charge higher for the entire year. As the war rally grew more mature, the NASDAQ complex even accelerated farther ahead of the traditional headline indices as speculative fervor surged into the latest interim tops witnessed in January.

This development is rendered very clearly on the graph. I call the gap between the NASDAQ indices and the S&P 500 and Dow 30 the “speculative premium”, as this gap showcases the very large differences in war-rally returns between purely speculative tech stocks and more traditional blue-chip investments. While none of the major indices shown above was ever absolutely inexpensive in recent years by any means, the valuation numbers help illustrate their different fundamental natures.

Early last March prior to the war rally, the NASDAQ 100 was trading at 32.6x earnings and yielding a laughable 0.2% in dividends, which are both far in excess of traditional bubble-top levels, not long-term bottoming zones. Meanwhile the S&P 500 was trading at 20.6x earnings and yielding almost 2.0% in dividends. While this is very highly valued historically, it was still relatively cheap at the time compared to the NASDAQ mania valuations.

So with the NASDAQ 100 trading at 60% higher valuations and yielding only 1/10th the dividend levels of the blue-chip S&P 500 right before the war rally launched last year, it is fair to call the NASDAQ the highly speculative play and the S&P 500 the far more conservative option, at least in this context. If you were a speculator last March betting with the war rally odds are that you gravitated towards tech stocks, while investors looked to more traditional and safer blue chips in the S&P 500.

As you remember, the largest general-market news issue early last year prior to Washington’s annexation of Iraq was the discussion on the reduction in dividend double taxation. Historically a very large portion of the stock market’s entire long-term return comes from dividends, so an easing of the onerous and immoral double taxation on dividends ought to be bullish for the stock market. Indeed, traditional Wall Street bulls were virtually unanimous in believing that solid dividend-paying stocks would be the best performers of 2003.

Thus, in the first couple months of 2003 prior to the birth of the mighty war rally, the popular bullish bet to take was that blue-chip dividend-paying stocks would outperform the more speculative overvalued sectors like technology. The long-overdue dividend tax cuts were expected to unleash a surge in dividend increases and popular interest in dividend-paying companies, especially in Greenspan’s negative real-rate environment hostile to traditional capital formation.

The war rally utterly defied these dividend predictions, with the most speculative companies paying little or no dividends witnessing the highest performance! All throughout 2003 I heard Wall Street strategists commenting on this and scratching their heads. It seemed like the least attractive companies in fundamental terms were reaping the biggest gains in the war rally, with the dividend-paying blue chips lagging far behind. Naturally the least fundamentally attractive sector was the still hyper-overvalued technology realm.

As the chart above shows, the speculative premium between the technology indices and the blue-chip indices grew throughout most of the war rally, ultimately growing quite wide. At the apparent top in late January, the NASDAQ was up 69.4% while the S&P 500 was “only” up 44.3%. The most speculative stocks had outperformed the usual blue-chip stable by well over half again as much!

So what you wonder? Here is the kicker! At real long-term secular bottoms, such as the ones that mark the ends of major bear markets, the backbone of the popular speculation psyche has been totally shattered. The bear has done such thorough work that much of an entire generation vows to never again gamble in the stock markets. The only survivors are the long-term value players, the very contrarians who would want to buy the lower-valued and higher-dividend-yielding stocks.

The war rally, however, was not led by the value players looking for historically sound returns. The very same slack-jawed starry-eyed New-Era maniacs who fed the NASDAQ bubble of the late 1990s led the war-rally charge northward as well! The war rally was fueled by tech speculators buying the most-overvalued tech stocks with the most meager earnings and effectively zero dividends. Blue-chip investing lagged far behind the war-rally tech mania.

With technology speculators still multiplying like rabbits even after the brutal October 2002 and March 2003 interim lows, the Great Bear never really finished its gruesome work. After historical bubbles the bubble-leading sector never leads the next real secular bull market forward. There are always new leaders not tainted by the previous bubble excesses that light the way out of the ashes of a supercycle bust.

If tech speculators had enough collective power to dominate the war rally, then it really looks like a temporary echo bubble and not a new sustainable bull market. A sustainable new bull market would not be led higher by the old usual-suspect tech-mania stocks, but by long-term value players chasing the best blue-chip stocks on fundamental grounds.

Now whether you agree with me or not that the Great Bear’s work was never finished without a real historically undervalued bust is not relevant for my thesis this week. This war-rally-to-date gains chart shows, undisputedly, that tech speculators led the war rally. As long as the speculative premium was growing, the war rally had to be taken seriously. But in recent weeks, the speculative premium has started to shrink dramatically.

If tech speculators led the war-rally charge northwards, casting their capital into the most overvalued and dividend-poor major stocks in the United States today, what does it mean when these very tech speculators grow tired, nervous, or overextended? As you can see above, in the past six weeks or so the speculative premium between the tech indices and blue-chips has shrunken rather dramatically. The tech specs who led this rally are abandoning ship!

Initially the war rally seemed to take the ill news of the desertion of its leaders rather well. From the NASDAQ top of late January until only a couple weeks ago, the S&P 500 and Dow 30 held strong near their rally-to-date highs. The tech stocks were contracting rapidly and hemorrhaging a large chunk of their gains, but the blue chips were rather stoically holding the line. Just this week, however, marking the anniversary of the war rally, the blue chips have ominously started to crack as well.

The speculative premium between the NASDAQ and S&P 500 has plummeted from 25.1% in late January at its zenith to a much smaller 14.1% today, and this contraction shows no signs of abating. Is there any chance that the war rally can continue its march higher when its leaders championing its cause for the past year are selling out?

Zooming in a bit, we can really see the interaction between the rapidly shrinking speculative premium and the newly failing blue chips. The war rally’s one-year anniversary was marked this week with all four of the major US stock indices cracking below their short-term support lines to the downside. The evidence of widespread technical price decay that we contrarians have long sought is finally showing up on the radar.

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For the entire war rally, corporate insiders in almost all sectors sold their stock aggressively, suggesting they did not believe it was sustainable over the long-term. For a whole year though there was enough new capital pouring into the US markets, especially in technology, to absorb this increasing deluge of insider selling.

By the end of January however, the tides of circumstance had shifted as the tech speculators started getting nervous over their nearly 70% war-rally gains. The tech specs finally joined the insiders in selling and the NASDAQ complex started falling. Since January 26th, the technology sector has given back over a fifth of its entire gains achieved during the war rally!

For most of the last six weeks, the blue-chip indices generally shrugged off the ominous portents of speculator desertion in tech-land. The S&P 500 closed at 1155 on January 26th when techs topped, it closed at 1158 on February 11th, it closed at 1157 on February 17th, it closed at 1156 on March 1st, and if closed at 1157 just last Friday on March 5th. The S&P 500 valiantly turned the other cheek as the war-rally leading-edge vanguard of New-Era tech speculators locked in their profits and walked away.

Interestingly the even more blue-chip Dow 30 was not quite as resilient though. While the S&P 500 traded sideways since the tech top, the Dow 30 managed one marginal new rally-to-date high near 10738 on February 11th. Since then it has slowly drifted lower, almost imperceptibly at times, until this week.

On Tuesday the psychologically crucial NASDAQ 2000 level failed as support, sending a great collective shudder of fear through the tech speculators who had led the entire war rally. This sparked farther late-day selling on Wednesday as the understanding of the implications of this development spread through Wall Street like wildfire.

The day that these charts were created, Wednesday March 10th, all of the major US stock indices graphed above broke through their short-term support heading lower. Even the resilient blue-chips hemorrhaged more than a tenth of their entire war-rally-to-date gains in only a few short days!

These ominous technical breakdowns highlight the serious trouble the war rally is in. Without its tech leaders, odds are that it cannot continue powering higher. With the psychologically immense NASDAQ 2000 level failing as support and the rapidly shrinking speculative premium of the war rally betraying increasing technology selling, this weakness is almost certain to feed on itself.

Initially the bulls will say no big deal, that this is just a necessary healthy bull-market correction. And perhaps they will be proven right! But it is crucial to realize that valuations remain at historic bubble extremes, suggesting that the Great Bear has not yet finished its grisly work and is due to make a stunning encore appearance.

As the tech portion of the war rally topped in late January, the NASDAQ 100 was trading at an unbelievable 45.5x earnings and only yielding a laughable 0.2% in dividends! Meanwhile the blue-chip S&P 500 was trading in official bubble territory as well, at 28.4x earnings and yielding only 1.6% in dividends! When hyper-overvalued markets are coupled with accelerating technical decay and fleeing speculators, it is certainly possible and even probable that something much more dangerous than an ordinary correction is approaching.

The technology sector has great influence, direct and indirect, outside of the NASDAQ as well. Most of the elite tech darlings of the NASDAQ 100 are also included in the S&P 500 component companies. And the two largest and most important NASDAQ companies, Microsoft and Intel, are also included in the Dow 30. In addition to commanding over a quarter of the NASDAQ 100’s entire market capitalization, these two companies are the second and sixth largest components of the elite Dow 30 industrials as well.

The elite tech darlings are still incestuously and hopelessly intertwined in all of the major stock indices following the Great Bubble of the late 1990s, and the collateral damage across the entire US market landscape from a technology failure of the war rally could be extensive.

If you are a speculator gaming this stock deterioration, an important technical trading indicator finally flashed a green light this week after teasing us for many months now. I published a Zeal Speculator Alert yesterday launching a brand new index-options trade based on this indicator for our alert-service subscribers and will also outline this development in the next issue of our acclaimed Zeal Intelligence monthly newsletter.

Great opportunities abound when short-term trends appear to be changing! Please subscribe today if you are interested in staying abreast of and trading on these important market developments.

On this pivotal week of important market anniversaries, the bulls are happily focusing on the one-year mark for their cyclical bull market in US equities. The contrarians, on the other hand, still see this war rally as an unsustainable anomaly and look back to the hard lessons from the Great Bubble tops so far above current index levels that were achieved four years ago this week.

The primary lesson of the Great Bubble was that valuation matters. The bulls still brazenly ignore this hard lesson, while the contrarians can never forget it.

As the war rally continues to deteriorate and fail, perhaps we will all soon know for sure whether valuations still really matter or not. Whether the abandonment of tech speculators of their mini-mania leads to a healthy correction or a brutal Great Bear downleg remains to be seen, but either way the war rally is failing.

Adam Hamilton, CPA

March 12, 2004

So how can you profit from this information? We publish an acclaimed monthly newsletter, Zeal Intelligence, that details exactly what we are doing in terms of actual stock and options trading based on all the lessons we have learned in our market research. Please consider joining us each month for tactical trading details and more in our premium Zeal Intelligence service at … http://www.zealllc.com/subscribe.htm

Questions for Adam? I would be more than happy to address them through my private consulting business. Please visit http://www.zealllc.com/financial.htm for more information.

Thoughts, comments, or flames? Fire away at zelotes@zealllc.com. Due to my staggering and perpetually increasing e-mail load, I regret that I am not able to respond to comments personally. I will read all messages though and really appreciate your feedback!

Copyright 2000 - 2004 Zeal Research (http://www.ZealLLC.com)

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http://www.fondscheck.de/Analy…etype=5&AnalysenID=395118

12.03.2004

Goldpreis nähert sich Unterstützung

DWS

Der Goldpreis bewegte sich im Tandem mit dem Euro und näherte sich der Unterstützungslinie von 400 US-Dollar. Dies berichten die Fondsexperten von der DWS in ihrer aktuellen Ausgabe des "Märkte im Fokus" für März 2004.

Bei einer Notierung von etwa 380 US-Dollar böten sich gute Chancen zum Einstieg insbesondere in kleinere Goldgesellschaften, zumal das Gesamtbild weiter positiv bleiben könnte, so die DWS-Meinung.

Zurückhaltend beurteile man die Aussichten von Aktien australischer und vor allem südafrikanischer Goldproduzenten. Ungünstige Wechselkurse würden auf die Erträge drücken, so dass sich einige Gesellschaften zu Umstrukturierungen gezwungen sehen würden.

Bewähren könnte sich eine Beimischung von Platin-Metallen und Diamanten, würden die DWS-Experten meinen.

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COT Silver Report for March 12, 2004

Silver Cot Report - Futures

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Silver Cot Report - Futures & Options Combined

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COT Gold Report for March 12, 2004

Gold Cot Report - Futures

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Gold Cot Report - Futures & Options Combined

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http://www.newsalert.com/bin/s…yTitle=Metals&Type=metals

Metals

March 12, 2004 20:23

Gap in Gold Production Looming

RENO, NV -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 12-03-2004 -- AXcess News (http://www.axcessnews.com) released a story highlighting gold mining companies that are having a banner year. The story points out how there is a gap in gold production looming and that investors should be watching these stocks more closely to see which companies will be outperforming their peers.

Over the last several years gold mining companies with properties in Nevada were turning up production levels. Meridian Gold (NYSE: MDG) (TSE: MNG), Apollo Gold Corporation (AMEX: AGT) (TSE: APG), Golden Phoenix Minerals, Inc. (OTC BB: GPXM), Metallic Ventures Gold Inc. (TSE) and Win-Eldrich Mines, Ltd., a TSX venture exchange company, are all at the forefront of that group, but some of these companies' properties are petering out, while others are rising.

For a junior mining company, Golden Phoenix is exceeding its larger peers in production and growth if operation size and capital expenditures are compared in proportion to those gold mining businesses.

Reno-based Meridian Gold (NYSE: MDG) (TSE: MNG) reported record operating cash flows of $24 million for the quarter. Due in large part to record throughput at the El Penon mine, averaging 2,050 dry tons per operating day, which is an increase of 17% year-over-year.

But El Penon reserves are petering out and while Meridian has been replacing reserves for four consecutive years through 2003, those properties' production will take several more years to develop, leaving investors with a gap in returns.

Denver-based Apollo Gold Corporation (AMEX: AGT) (TSE: APG), like Meridian, has also been building reserves. Apollo announced on February 26 that its Black Fox project, located near Timmins, Ontario, Canada, had proven reserves of 457,100 ounces and that its total proven gold reserves were 1,928,093 ounces verses 940,800 ounces in 2003, an increase of 987,293 ounces, or 104.94%.

With many of the major producers properties playing out companies like Apollo and Golden Phoenix will be growing in production over the next two years while others, like Meridian, will be declining.

What is it that's causing gold companies to widen the gap in production cycles? How does that affect investors? Why would a junior mining company be considered better than its larger peers? To find out, go to http://www.axcessnews.com

About AXcess News:

Dubbed the "Yahoo! of small cap business news" by Gordon Borrell, one of America's leading media and research gurus, AXcess News is fast becoming a known commodity for both the serious investor and people in general looking for informed articles and insightful columns. http://www.axcessnews.com

Media Contact:
Eric Stevenson
Of AXcess News
+1-775-882-1720
editor@theaxcess.net

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