Some evening news with extensive specialist commentary

New Deal Demoncrat - more on the Q2 GDP. However, he notes there are long leading hints that 2015 might suck.


Ritholtz - whine whine whine I'm so scared why does the market keep going up please hold me. You're such a fucking sissy, Barry. Really. Here's Chopper to beat some sense into you:

The problem is you've lived through a bear market since 2000, and now you're expecting more bear to come when we're quite obviously still nearer the start of a secular bull. Quit pissing your fucking lace panties and party like it's 1994.

Do you remember 1994? If we transported you back to 1994, would you have any fucking clue how to play the 1994 market anymore? Harden the fuck up, Barbara.


Reformed Borker (Bork Bork Bork!) - memo to CAPE slaves. Again with Shiller CAPE being worthless, which makes me wonder why the hell him and his panty-pissing little kissy-buddy have been giving it all this fucking airtime to begin with. Quote:

One argument that should have gotten more attention as we dismantled the CAPE meme, however, was the fact it almost never tells you to be invested. As Anatole Kaletsky explains at Reuters, waiting for a CAPE buy signal is like waiting for a lucid moment from Courtney Love.

Oh come on Josh, Courtney's too easy a target. Uh, plus her whole history of insane violent outbursts.


FT Alphaville - Fed sees continued underutilization of labour resources. Michael Shaoul disagrees.


Mining.com - robust copper price prompts switch to aluminium. I was just thinking about this over the past few weeks. If you want to replace Cu wire with Al wire, to maintain the same resistivity per unit length all you have to do is up it by 2 on the AWG, which is about a 50%-60% increase in cross-sectional area (thus mass). But copper has three times the density, so by weight you're actually using fewer pounds of aluminium for the same length of wire at a larger gauge.

So why does copper cost so much more than aluminium? Is it because it takes a long time to start the move to substitution? Frankly, we should have all switched to Al wire by now.

Oh and when we finally do, what do you think will happen to the copper price as recycling increases while demand decreases, what with something like 30% of copper demand today already being met by recycling?

And why the fuck can't stupid Americans spell aluminium properly?


Mineweb - Minera IRL sells Don Nicolas for $11.5M. Um... is that a good price, Otto? Is this good news?


BI - billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer's biggest worry is... an electromagnetic pulse? Unfortunately, Singer has no fucking clue. He reveals this when he says

The risks associated with electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, represent another story entirely. It can occur naturally, from solar storms that send 'coronal mass ejections,' which are massive energetic bursts of solar wind, tens of millions of miles in a mere few hours. Or it can be artificial, produced by a high-altitude (at least 15 miles) explosion of relatively low-yield (even Hiroshima-strength) nuclear weapons.

No. No it can't, you fucking dumbass. An EMP is not caused by a coronal mass ejection. CMEs cause geomagnetic induced currents, not electromagnetic pulses. A nuke EMP is qualitatively a completely different thing from a geomagnetic induced current. A GIC will not fry your cellphone nor your computer, or for that matter anything that isn't owned by a major electrical generation & distribution utility.

You could have fucking looked that up on Wikipedia, or you could have fucking read about it on Fark or in the comments section of any of a hundred recent articles on the July 2012 CME event. But you didn't. You are asking your investors to believe in bullshit that you've literally just made up in your own fucking head.

You suck as a hedge fund manager, and Joey the Weasel sucks for giving you free press.

Kitco gives a paltry four minutes to the Cookie Monster

Here's Daniela, interviewing The Cookie Monster:



He's in San Diego, so I guess he must be drinking tequila?

Personally I like tequila-based drinks: they sneak up on you, nice and slow, then wham! all of a sudden the minute you try to stand up you're shit-faced drunk.

I dunno why that is. Maybe Brent can explain it.

China and EMs - going up?!?

I read somewhere last night that a whole pile of money has flooded into EM ETFs recently.

Charts:

EEM is moving up, but on decreasing volume. Does it drop back down soon? RSI says maybe.

And how much of this is a contribution from the Nifty 50? We know a pile of Western money has flooded into India recently.

China all-cap is getting mighty stroppy here. Is that supposed to be good for gold, you think? Chinese getting wealthier? I mean, they like to buy gold, no? And the "hard landing" was going to be bad for gold, wasn't it?

Or is this also overbought and about to drop back down? RSI says yes.

Morning news: GDP, GDP, GDP, GDP, and the Ayn Rand Institute are assholes

OK, fine, here's your serious news:


New Deal Demoncrat - Q2 GDP at 4%. And he's not surprised because he saw a strong GDP print forming months ago in his weekly indicators.

FT Alphaville - Q2 GDP was even better than expected. I guess nobody else in the world reads New Deal Demoncrat's weekly indicators? Really, 4% was a slam-dunk; why were these clowns expecting 2.9%?

Calculated Risk - a few GDP graphs. State & local will continue to improve their contribution to GDP from this point forward, as the revenue shortfall disappears. And he notes, no matter what else you read in the lamestream media, residential investment really has nowhere to go but up.

Bespoke - industrials falling apart. Seems everyone's running to defensives. Is that a contrarian buy signal, the way it was the last few times? What is there to be defensive about out there? $VIX is crawling upwards too: what do you need to buy downside protection against right now? Interestingly, $INDU and $TRAN are both rolling over this week. I guess because the strong GDP print means the economy is collapsing, or something.

American Enterprise Institute - the Ayn Rand Institute is disappointed in Paul Ryan. That's what you get for tying your policy cart to a dystopian fantasy cult, Paul! Here's a quote from a nameless ARI randroid:

But of course that assumes we should have a welfare state. … The real question is not whether we should have a “safety net” or not. The question is whether we should have a coercive welfare state. What I find offensive about Ryan’s … whole approach is that it doesn’t regard the rights and well-being of those forced to pay for the welfare state as worthy of much, if any, consideration. Instead, it starts by observing that some people are in need and jumps immediately to the question of what welfare state programs would most help them.

But that’s immoral. Just because there are people out there suffering and Ryan wants to help them doesn’t give him the right to concoct schemes that treat you and me and everyone who pays his own way as a means to Ryan’s supposedly noble ends. What about my goals and priorities? What about my right to pursue happiness? What about yours?

And that's Ayn Rand right there. Has nobody else noticed, btw, the irony of the anti-welfare sentiments of a person whose writings were motivated entirely by bitter memories of how her privileged family lost their wealth in Russia's communist revolution? I mean, Randroids almost seem to want the peasants and proletariat to revolt, don't they? Why not try to avoid that?

Weird news, because boring news is boring

The boring market news has been boring, so here's some weird and silly news instead:


BBC - Chinese spies hack Canada's National Research Council. They obviously are interested in our recent research into producing donuts with maple syrup. Either that or they're becoming concerned with the number of injuries they're seeing from touch icing, and are trying to find out if we've found a solution here.


Right Wing Watch - God gave Alabama coal, so coal plant regulations violate the will of God. In other news, the Alabama Public Service Commission's president is named Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh. And yes, that's a dude. Twinkle. No really, read the article, I'm not making this up.


Mining.com - Goldrea Resources quits the V, relists on the X. Quote:

James Elbert comments, "By selling the Rushan/Daye property in China earlier this year, the Company extinguished approximately four million dollars of debt. This allows Goldrea to focus on mineral projects in North America and places the company in a positive cash position. Along with developing our core holdings, we plan to explore the current ripe environment for deeply discounted quality properties. Our move to the CSE is a positive step in the Company's administration, and we look forward to robust growth in the coming years."

Translation:

James Elbert comments, "My company had nothing but a pile of debt and some moosepasture, now we have no debt and no prospects. It felt pointless for us to continue trading on the Venture, especially now that it's become impossible to raise money even from family and Canadian singer-songwriters. Besides, retail can trade on the X just as easily now, and they don't read audited financials anyway."

A good start!

Blog stats fun: my god will you all get a life edition

Sigh....

1. Obvious. That's my blog name. Nice to see it's becoming infamous after only something like three years of hard work.

2. and 3. I guess Daniela's interviewed some famous nitwit again, and the nitwit's followers all have a crush on her now, so they're googlestalking her. I'll go check the Kitco Youtube channel when I get home, but it's probably just some Libertopian cipher like Steve Forbes or Ron Paul again.

4. Yes, that Body Remix/Les Variations Goldberg is a freakin' weird piece of modern dance right there.

5. Yes, I guess she is. It's summer after all. She should try these new Palm Bay Key Lime Cherry freezie alcopops I just found at the LCBO. They're awesome. Unfortunately my employer was apparently recently taken over by fundamentalist puritan Southern Baptist moralizing idiots, so I can't give you a link because "alcohol" is now a banned topic on our internet.

Seriously. The webpage category "alcohol" is banned. This is the same bunch of overpaid upper-management clowns that banned our yearly playoff hockey pool because it's "gambling" and would lead to broken families or sin or some such bullshit.

The moral of this story is, if you're working at a perfectly good Canadian company, and they start buying out American companies and promoting idiot Americans to the management structure, you need to goddamn well leave before they turn into the fucking 100 Huntley Street.

6. Yes she is, we went over this already.

7. "Mila Kunis in panties" is always a good earner, both on this blog and in Hollywood. In fact, Mila should maybe start up a youtube channel where she models underwear: it'd make her a frickin' fortune. Then again, Mila already invested in the S&P back in March 2013 while all the idiot doomers were calling a market top. So why would she need to show off her admittedly gorgeous body for a few advertising pennies when she's already made untold millions with her investments? Just to make me happy, maybe?

8. My god, Canadians are so goddamn lame when Sarah M and Geoff C are the newest "it" couple. What, is everyone already tired of Avril Lavigne and Horseface The Braying Tonedeaf Douchenozzle?

9. I don't remember mentioning "super volcano the movie".

10. Italy. Bit of a funny accent though, definitely not from the south.

Very little news, very much sarcasm

GDXJ looks like it might be failing back down, or maybe not. Who knows. Like I said, I'll bother playing when it re-establishes some sort of trend.

In the meantime, here's some news:


Bespoke - consumer confidence surges. So that's a great reason to sell US equities, right? Cos we're at a top, right?


Ritholtz - on the narcissistic arguments of permadoomers. Here's one example that should be familiar to certain people around here:

CLA: “The market is wildly overvalued. This will end in a crash.”

To which our RP responds, Can we really have a bubble when so many people are calling for a crash? Is that likely?

CLA: “Look at Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio -- it's wildly overvalued.”

But, as our RP observes, this ratio is going to rise for the next few years during the rebound from the earnings crash of 2008. Besides, the CAPE shows the market has been overvalued for most of the past 15 years. What about other measures of valuation that show markets are fairly valued?

CLA: “They are wrong. The Fed is inflating an asset bubble -- it’s the only thing driving stock prices.”

What, our RP says, about the recovery in earnings? They are up more than 150 percent since the lows.

CLA: “It's just because of the Fed's printing presses and share buybacks. Nothing else matters.”

How can one have a reasoned discussion with these folks?

Answer: you can't. If you really care about them you can leave them alone to make bad, really brutally bad, decisions for a few years while you publicly mock their top-calls in your blog, and suggesting that they read news sources who aren't idiotic goldbugs with no economics comprehension whatsoever like the fucking Caseys, Hussman, Shedlock or (omg wtf lol) Max Keiser.

If they have any wits about them they'll clue in eventually. If they have no wits about them they'll lose all their money and go away.

Tough love is the only way sometimes.


NYMag - Hamas may not have kidnapped Israeli teens. Ha ha! This is so funny!

To recap, Hamas kidnapped and killed three Israeli teens, so some Israelis went out and kidnapped and killed a Palestinian teen, while the army killed ten Palestinians and arrested 600 more.

And that pissed off the Palestinians, so they started firing rockets, to which Israel replied by killing 1200 people in Gaza, including 250 children, and leaving a further 200,000 seeking shelter.

But now, hilariously enough, it was all just a big misunderstanding! Ha ha! Oh, it's so nice to be able to just laugh at this whole silly mess now! Ha ha! I bet the Israelis and Palestinians are just pissing themselves with laughter! Ha ha!

Ha ha!

New theory about gold & miner charts

Some charts, observations, then another possible explanatory narrative:

For some reason, GDX is back above its short EMA today. Looks good, dunno why.

By the way, I've also included an EMA(24) in these charts, since that provided secondary support through July, and secondary resistance back in April and May.

GDXJ seems equally healthy. And yeah, the EMA(24) doesn't apply to the past few days here, unless you count Friday's reversal of Thursday's low as an important fakeout.

I consider silver to be central to everything, since it's not led me astray these past few months - it seems to be good at pointing out the lies in the GLD and GDXJ charts.

But silver looks like crap. Sorry, it does. See those last three candles in the chart, all hanging together in a cluster under the EMA? I call that formation "the hanging booger".

Now here's the interesting bit:

Normally I don't give a crap about horizontal support and resistance lines. But, while GLD is in a downtrend below both the EMA(9) and the EMA(24), it still seems to be acting as if $124 is important support. Which it was in April and May.

And here's the thing.

While GLD is right back own to its April-May support right now, GDX is 10% above and GDXJ is 20% above.

Why should that be?

I'm thinking maybe GDX and GDXJ are looking stronger than GLD simply because people are assuming that the $1280-$1290 gold price will never be broken to the downside again. After all, if "the low is in", you'll be accumulating miners, not dumping them; so the additional downward price pressure of expectation of future dooooom won't be there.

Which might still mean miners do no more than stay horizontal until gold decides to make its next move.

So I guess if gold breaks below $1280, the juniors could have a long way to drop. But if gold breaks back above say $1330, that's the hint of a coming higher high and miners could move upward rather quick again.

I'm still agnostic for now, like I said: I'm going to wait to see what happens, I'm not interested in trying to bottom-tick the miners when it carries the potential for large overnight losses. I can ride the wave when it comes, if it comes.

OHIO GOV. TED STRICKLAND TRIED TO SURVIVE ONE WEEK AT MINIMUM WAGE: can't

Politico - Ohio gov. Ted Strickland goes one week on minimum wage. So do something about it, you fascist fucking kleptocratic oligarch. Raise minimum wage to an even barely liveable pittance in the world's richest country.

You know, this reminds me of that fucking retard Tim Hudak, who was grossly offended by the idea of Hydro One linemen making $100,000 a year (after overtime). He seemed to think that everyone in Ontario should be making $6.85 an hour, which was the minimum wage the last time Hudak was ever in the same room as one of the poors.

The reason the fucking rich kleptocratic elite keeps voting themselves huge raises is because they hear about their own salaries all the time. The reason the kleptocratic scum don't raise minimum wage, or even provide proper raises to their workers, is because they have no clue how impossible it is to survive on $20k/year: they've never had to look for a cheap rental apartment, they've never had to budget their grocery spending, they've never had to worry about finding money to fill the gas tank.

So fuck you, gov. Strickland, with your shitty one week of concern. You're still the enemy. Because you are in power and you refuse to use that power for the good of the people.

Monday lunchtime news

Here's a little bit of reading for today.

Ritholtz - rising rates I'm not scared of. He notes that rising rates this time would be a sign of a normalizing economy, not the usual instance of the Fed trying to choke off growth. I fail to understand why, if this is what he thinks, he's still a pants-wetting top-calling sissy.

NDD - housing market report. I guess housing is falling off as a tailwind? Is that it?

FT Alphaville - everyone's waiting for the correction. And as they say at the end, "if everyone is waiting on a correction it ain’t going to last long." Then again, if everyone is waiting for a correction that ain't going to last long, it's going to last for a while. I wouldn't put it past the market to correct, btw - the Republicans have a lot of derp ready to let loose during the coming midterm elections.

NEW FEATURE: Top posts of the week

Josh Brown likes padding his pageviews by re-linking his "top posts of the week", so why not me too?

So here were this week's most popular posts on the blorg:

July 20 - I agree that Mike Shedlock is a fucktard and will go one further. He eventually printed a "correction". Then again, he's got yet more Russians feeding him news now, and he's also calling for economic dooooom in Japan and Europe. Please don't read this fucking clown for "market insight" or you will lose all your money.

July 25 - Gold and the miners: charts for the weekend. The charts got a tad less scary by 4PM, but I really distrust a Friday afternoon ramp-up. Then again, maybe it's all explained by gold OpEx? You better hope so, goldbuggers!

July 25 - PERMASHAVE DAVE SAYS HE'S NEVER COMING BACK TO THE JUNIORS: he'll be back. Nice to see caps-lock falling to #3 this week.

July 26 - EARTH WAS NEARLY DESTROYED IN 2012: here's what you needed to know. Happy to see that doomer pr0n still gets the clicks. This is why we own gold, people!

July 24 - Sarah McLachlan and Frank Giustra. Seems people do actually care if Sarah ends up losing all her money and being forced to move back east, eh? Here's your advice from me, Sarah: buy the fucking SPY (VFV is the Canadian-listed version), then walk away for 5 years.

And speaking of Sarah, here's a PSA for you:

Some rare Sunday reading

Here's some stuff I happened across this weekend:

Bespoke - huge week ahead. Q2 GDP is supposed to be a stunner if you ask NDD or Bill McBride; FOMC should be a non-event.

New Deal Demoncrat - weekly indicators summary. Leading indicators are positive and coincident indicators are mixed. As an aside, do you read any other bloggers who know what a "leading indicator" or a "coincident indicator" is?

Caculated Risk - chemical activity barometer. It's a leading indicator for industrial production.

FT beyond brics - Israel just pissed off Brazil. Geez, Israel still hasn't clued in about to how to survive in the new multilateral world, have they?

Billy Bishop - on the corruption crackdown. Sinocism's take on the anti-corruption campaign in China.

Chronicles of Brodrick - it's on like donkey dongs or something. He got his subscribers back into the juniors on Thursday. Good luck with that, Sean, but I'm waiting for confirmation that the trend isn't over. Plus that whole thing about the failure of the Indian monsoon. Past performance is no guarantee of future survival, dude, and I'm scared that there are a lot of other junior gold herdsmen who were thinking exactly what you were.

Vox - Britney Spears is a pop queen, she doesn't have to sing. As an aside, nobody ever seems to complain about Ralf Hütter using a vocoder, and now also a computer voice. Why is that?

EARTH WAS NEARLY DESTROYED IN 2012: here's what you needed to know

New York Post - by the way, civilization was nearly destroyed by a solar flare two years ago. It would have taken out all electricity worldwide, which obviously means we all would have died.

This is why we own gold, people!!