Finansiella Insikter

Under de år som jag följt guldmarknaden så var det bra länge sedan man såg manipulationen av guld så tydligt som under dagens handel. Vårt tidigare inlägg, som tog upp hur kartellen använder sig av teknisk analys, kunde inte ha publicerats vid en bättre tidpunkt.

Som vi talat om tidigare så var 1320 dollar en viktig teknisk nivå att hålla, vilket såg ut att bli fallet då guld (och silver) i princip lyckades att genomföra en sk ‘key reversal’, vilket enligt textboken är en mycket positiv händelse. Men icke sa nicke, en kort tid efter att Comex öppnat klubbade kartellen ner guld, och lyckades driva ner priset under 1320 dollar där man visste att det fanns en drös med sk ‘stop-loss‘. När dessa väl utlösts, så kunde priset bara gå en väg.

Med tanke på att dollarn fallit kraftigt samtidigt som guldet rasat så är detta ett oerhört tydligt tecken på att man vill få ner priset på guld till varje pris, trots att de underliggande starka fundamenta inte förändrats ett skvatt.

Inget är säkert här i världen, men jag skulle bli oerhört förvånad om inte guld vänder upp kraftigt innan det når 200-dagars glidande medelvärde (i intervallet 1275-1285 dollar). När priset klubbas ner på detta sätt har det i princip alltid varit för att en guld-positiv händelse skulle inträffa och man vill vara säker på att guld rusar från en lägre nivå så att det inte genererar för mycket intresse.

Nedan är Bill Murphys kommentar till dagens händelser:

The assault on gold is as vicious as I have seen in the last 12 years taking into account the outside markets are GOLD SUPPORTIVE. If our information is correct, in addition to The Gold Cartel the bombing is coming from a G-8 French led initiative. What is important to keep in mind is how bad things must really be for officialdom to go all out in their efforts to SHOOT THE MESSENGER. What a bunch of bureaucratic sad sacks. In the years ahead, this will go down as yet another central bank faux pas … just as dumping their gold below $300 was a blunder.

All that said, the silver action is superlative. You can feel it wanting to explode, but the gold selling is just too much for the silver price at the present time. After all the bums have thrown at silver, it is still $27! And it is at $27 with the open interest very near its recent lows and WAY, WAY off its highs. IMO it is only a matter of weeks and months before the silver market seizes up and goes berserk to the upside … dragging gold along with it in the other direction this time.

King World News har fått nya kommentarer om guldmarknaden från sin ‘handlare i London’. Kommentarerna påminner om det som vi tagit upp flera gånger tidigare, dvs att marknaden inte bara är riggad utan att man flitigt använder sig av teknisk analys för att skrämma sk ‘weak hands’ till att sälja, dvs investerare som inte är övertygade om guldets fundamenta och potential, utan bara ‘hakar på’.

Taktiken går ut på att bryta viktiga moståndsnivåer och skapa tekniska formationer som i en icke manipulerad marknad skulle vara oerhört negativa. Kartellen känner även till var investerare har lagt sina ‘stoploss’ nivåer och kan se till att dessa utlöses för att skapa ytterligare momentum.

Rådet är därför att till viss del bortse från teknisk analys när det gäller guld, framförallt vad gäller mer långsiktiga negativa tekniska formationer som ‘huvud/skuldra’ etc. Som inlägget från igår visar så har guld (och guldaktier) i princip alltid vänt upp när det sett som allra värst ut rent tekniskt. Detsamma gäller dessvärre när det ser som tekniskt bäst ut. Detta är dock inget konstigt, då manipulatörerna till varje pris vill undvika att den tekniska bilden blir för stark och därmed riskerar att öka intresset för guld från nya investerare.

London Trader – Big Money Lined Up To Buy Gold & Silver
 
Ahead of the World Economic Forum at Davos we have seen gold and silver under pressure.  One trader out of London commented, “It appears certain interests are trying to give the appearance of technical weakness, so all of the banks have sold.  That tells me we are at a bottom because they are always wrong in their call.  Remember they are telling their clients to sell here, and they are on the other side of the trade.”

“On the 17th of January as an example, Lloyds Bank told all of their clients to sell gold based on a head and should pattern.  Lloyds first target was said to be $1,148, then below that $841 to $875, and I have never seen that from them. 

What is a big sign of weakness is that these operations creating the appearance of technical damage are being done in the thinly traded access market when the majority of traders in the UK and Asia are not even in the market.

The technical watchers are so myopic, they see this pattern that is being orchestrated and go on the sell side of the market.  The banks are bidding on the other side of the trade buying. 

Meanwhile physical demand is incredibly robust from the eastern hemisphere creating a floor on the downside preventing a further breakdown.  There are certain banking interests which have been making an effort to keep a lid on prices of gold and silver, and as I mentioned they are being met by intense Asian demand as well as savvy traders lining up to buy this drawdown in both gold and silver.

Big money is lining up to buy into any attempts to flush the price lower in both metals.”

Torsdagens FOMC möte bjöd inte på några direkta överraskningar från Federal Reserve, QE2 fortsätter som planerat (finns ingen annat man kan göra) och det var heller inga ledamöter som motsatte sig nu när Thomas Hoenig lämnat sin stol.

Vad som som dock var anmärkningsvärt, och som till och med fick propaganda-maskinen Goldman Sachs att lyfta på ögonbrynen, var att Federal Reserve, trots kraftigt stigande råvaupriser (framförallt matpriser tack vare manipulationen av guld och silver), vägrar att erkänna att inflationen stiger, och det med besked.

Här är ett utdrag från press-releasen:

Although commodity prices have risen, longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable, and measures of underlying inflation have been trending downward.

Och här är Goldmans kommentar (via ZeroHedge):

To us, the main surprise-and it is a small one-is that the FOMC continued to characterize core inflation as trending downward despite an uptick in the December CPI. One can argue that the tense of this statement shifted slightly more to the past-”measures of underlying inflation have been trending downward” vs. “have continued to trend downward”-but the distinction seems slight. The committee did preface this comment with a recognition that commodity prices have risen, as we had anticipated.

Och slutligen en kommenrar från ZeroHedge:

Some of the observations in this snoozer: observations on the lack of unemployment improvement, on the less than sufficient household spending, but most notably, the Fed notes the increase in commodity prices, yet still believes longer-term inflation expectations are stable. Notable is the deletion of the $75 billion per month deletion of the monetization run-rate, no reason is given for the change in the runrate purchases. And with Hoenig gone, every voting Fed president is now a docile little lamb. Lastly, there is no discussion anywhere of the Fed’s only (third) mandate: that of getting the Russell 2000 to 36,000 in one massive flash smash (see IBM yesterday).

Skall bli oerhört intressant att se hur Federal Reserve agerar när företagen inom en inte alltför avläsen framtid inte längre kan absorberade kostnaderna från de skenande råvarupriserna utan tvingas höja priserna mot konsument. Då kommer Fed inte längre komma undan med propagandan om en låg ‘underliggande inflation’, dvs när man hänvisar det sk kärn-KPI som inte tar med kostnader för mat och energi. Att folk har gått på denna propaganda fram tills nu är chockerande.

I sitt senaste inlägg pekar Jesse på att det finns stora likheter mellan denna nedgången för guld och den nedgång som skedde mellan maj och augusti förra året som resulterade i ett rally utan dess like. Förutom ett par intressanta grafer över guld finns även grafer för silver och dollarn.

Klicka på graferna för större bild.

Tomorrow is option expiration on the Comex for precious metals. The FOMC will also be announcing its rate decision.

This intermediate gold top and correction bears a striking resemblance to the May – August 2010 top and correction just prior to gold’s amazing breakout rally.

I think the next four weeks are going to be quite interesting in a number of dimensions, and through the chill of winter, a portent of Spring is in the air.

Vid en välbesökt presentation under Vancouver Investment Resource Conference, som pågår just nu, talade Eric Sprott sig varm om silver som han kallade ‘årtiondets investering’.

Som vi tagit upp tidigare så har Eric Sprott en otroligt bra insyn i utbud- och efterfrågesituationen för silver då han nyligen startat en ETF som investerar i endast fysiskt silver (PSLV), utöver sin guld ETF (PHYS). Det är knappast en slump att Sprott ser en explosiv utveckling för silver framöver när han själv nämner att utbudet på den fysiska marknaden är så obefintligt att han tvingats vänta många månader på leverans.

Här är ett utdrag från Bill Murphys Midas:

Eric Sprott gave his usual superb presentation at the Vancouver conference and had the standing room only room drooling about silver. The supply/demand situation is so stunningly bullish that Eric has it as the investment of the decade. I could go on and on here, but at minimum he expects the gold/silver ratio to return to its historical norm of 16 to 1. And at some point Eric thought it might possibly overshoot to 10 to 1.

The technical analyst who Eric respects very highly, and one that Eric brought to the attention of the attendees, is looking for $2100 gold in the late spring. The gold/silver ratio won’t drop to 16 to 1 overnight. However, if silver does what Eric thinks it is going to do in the months ahead, we’d be looking at $130 silver. If the gold/silver ratio dropped to 30 to 1, we are still looking at $70 silver, should gold make a move like his top tech guy is predicting.

If there ever was a time to pick up silver on the cheap, compared to where it is going to go, this latest drop ranks at the top of that heap.

Måndagens nedgång för guld resulterade i en smått historisk likvidation av långa positioner i guld. Det totala antalet utestående terminskontrakt, den sk ‘open interest‘, rasade med 81,752 till 498,998. För att få lite perspektiv så är det värt att veta att om man går hela vägen tillbaka till september 2008 var den största nedgången under en och samma dag ‘bara’ 28,254, vilket var den 24 november 2009.

För er som inte är bekanta med denna ‘open interest’ statistik så kan jag nämna att detta är en gigantisk siffra och betydelsefull händelse, då den indikerar att ett stort antal guldinvesterare ‘kastade in handduken’, frivilligt eller ofrivilligt. Detta är oerhört positivt då det ‘rensar ut’ sk ‘svaga händer’ från marknaden innan stora, långsiktiga investerare (läs Kina) kliver in och köper upp dessa positioner från nervösa och panikslagna investerare till bottenpriser.

Här är ett urklipp från Midas:

If the goal of The Gold Cartel was to flush out the gold and silver spec longs so they could cover short positions before the mega moves higher coming this year, it has worked. The following open interest numbers for yesterday are stunning to put it mildly. Never seen anything like it. The gold open interest fell 81,752 contracts to 498,998. The orchestrated cabal takedown has sent a hoard of longs to the sidelines. The silver open interest drop, down 5368 contracts to 128,228 was very large, but nothing like what happened in the gold pit.

Going back to Sept 2008 on a daily basis, the largest one-day o/i drop for gold was -28,254 on November 24 2009.

Such a drop in gold is stunningly bullish for the weeks ahead. The market has been cleaned out. The COT report on Friday ought to be a very interesting and telling one.

Som vi skrev om igår så är 1320 dollar en viktig nivå, men om denna inte håller så är det inte lika troligt att vi kommer att få se guld under 1300 dollar, med tanke på open interest statiken. Glidande medelvärde över 200 dagar bör sätta definitivt stopp för nedgången kring 1285 dollar.

Den sk ‘Commitment Of Traders‘ (COT) statistiken från förra veckan visade på att ‘professionella investerare’ (managed money) lividerat en stor andel av sina långa positioner i guld de senaste veckorna, vilket också är ett mycket positivt tecken då dessa ‘smarta investerare’ har sparat sitt krut och snart är redo att ‘kliva in igen’ och köpa guld till bottenpriser.

Om någon mot förmodan behöver ytterligare bevis på att vi lever i en bisarr värld, så spana in rubriken och läs inlägget nedan hämtat från TheEconomicCollapseBlog.

The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps The More Money JP Morgan Makes
JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money. In the video posted below, JP Morgan executive Christopher Paton admits that this is “a very important business to JP Morgan” and that it is doing very well. Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine how much JP Morgan’s profits in this area have soared. But doesn’t this give JP Morgan an incentive to keep the number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program as high as possible?

There are just some things that are a little too “creepy” to be “outsourced” to private corporations. The JP Morgan executive in the interview below does his best to put a positive spin on all this, but it just seems really unsavory for a big Wall Street bank to be making so much money off of the suffering of tens of millions of Americans….

So if unemployment goes down will this ruin JP Morgan’s food stamp business?
Well, apparently not. In the interview Paton says that 40% of food stamp recipients are currently working, and he seems convinced that there could be further “growth” in that segment.
So is this what America is turning into?

A place where tens of millions of the unemployed and the working poor crawl over to Wal-Mart and the dollar store every month to use the food stamp debit cards provided to them by JP Morgan?

It turns out that JP Morgan also provides child support debit cards in 15 U.S. states and they also provide unemployment insurance benefit debit cards in seven states.

Apparently states have found that they can save millions of dollars by “outsourcing” the provision of these benefits to big financial firms like JP Morgan.

So what happens if you have a problem with your food stamp debit card?

Well, you call up a JP Morgan service center. When you do this, there is a very good chance that you are going to be helped by a JP Morgan call center employee in India.

That’s right – it turns out that JP Morgan is saving money by “outsourcing” food stamp customer service calls to India.

When ABC News asked JP Morgan about this, the company would not tell ABC News which states have customer service calls sent to India and which states have them handled inside the United States….

JP Morgan is the only one today still operating public-assistance call centers overseas. The company refused to say which states had calls routed to India and which ones had calls stay domestically. That decision, the company said, was often left up to the individual states.

JP Morgan has been moving some of these call center jobs back inside the United States due to political pressure, but this whole situation is a really good example of what the “global economy” is doing to middle class Americans.

Just try to imagine the irony – a formerly middle class American that has lost a job to outsourcing calls up to get help with food stamp benefits only to be answered by a call center employee in India.
Welcome to the global economy, eh?
But wait, there is more.

It has just been announced that JP Morgan has admitted that they wrongly foreclosed on over a dozen military families and that they have been overcharging “thousands” of other military families on their mortgages.
Ouch.

It is a really bad public relations move to mess with military families.
Is anyone over at JP Morgan even paying attention?
JP Morgan has also been one of the primary financial institutions involved in the foreclosure “robo-signing” scandal.

They just seem to be having all kinds of problems lately. But they are not alone.
The truth is that we have gotten to the point where big Wall Street banks such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Morgan Stanley just have way, way too much power.
The biggest Wall Street financial institutions had no trouble begging for bailouts from the U.S. government during the financial crisis, but when the American people have needed a little grace and mercy from them they have been less than helpful

För de som är ute efter att köpa mer guld och undrar var vi kan se en botten för denna nedgång kan jag rekommendera följande inlägg, skrivet av Erik McCurdy från Prometheus Market Insight och hämtat från JS Mineset:

Greetings Jim,

In early January, the Gold Currency Index (GCI) broke below long-term uptrend support, negatively diverging from gold in US dollar terms and suggesting the start of a correction or extended period of consolidation. Last week, gold broke below long-term uptrend support as well, confirming the development of a short-term downtrend from the beginning of the year.

As longtime readers know, the GCI has an excellent track record when it comes to predicting the future direction of the gold market, and it has anticipated every major breakout and correction since it was created in 2005.

The reason the GCI has been so successful during the past six years is also the reason that it was created in the first place: gold has taken on the role of an international currency. When the secular bear market in stocks began in 2000, we expected gold to embark on a secular bull market in response to the inevitable fiscal and monetary responses of the federal government. Events unfolded precisely as expected, and the price of gold has been steadily rising for ten years now. As the secular bull market matured last decade, we wanted to devise a method to track the intrinsic value of gold as an international currency, thereby eliminating the impact of inter-country currency relationships. We developed a composite of gold prices in the currencies of 10 of the largest economies in the world as defined by GDP in 2005, and the GCI was born. Its performance since then has certainly validated the premise that led to its creation.

Looking ahead, intermediate-term cycle analysis indicates that gold is on the brink of forming the next meaningful low. We are now 25 weeks into the cycle following the last Intermediate-Term Cycle Low (ITCL) on July 30.

Ninety percent of all intermediate-term cycles are 23 weeks or shorter, so the latest ITCL is currently overdue and could occur at any time during the next few weeks. There is congestion support in the $1,320 area on the previously displayed daily chart and long-term uptrend support at $1,300 on the weekly chart below, so it is likely that the next low will develop at or above one of these support levels.

Technical indicators are currently bearish on the daily and weekly charts, supporting a continuation of the developing correction, so we will simply have to wait and see where this next intermediate-term low ultimately forms during the next few weeks

Best,

Erik McCurdy
Prometheus Market Insight

De som har genomskådat Federal Reserves monetära politik, såsom Jim Rickards, har tidigare påpekat att centralbanken teoretiskt skulle kunna bli insolvent med tanke på de gigantiskt stora tillgångar som man lagt till balansräkningen på skattebetalarnas bekostnad. Bara en liten ökning av räntorna skulle resulterar i gigantiska förluster för Federal Reserve.

De som förväntade sig att Federal Reserve ännu en gång skulle komma undan fick givetvis rätt. Federal Reserve, genom sk ‘kreativ bokföring’, har nämligen sett till så att framtida förluster på dessa tillgångar istället kommer att hamna under vad man kallar ‘negative interest owed to the Treasury’, istället för en reducering av det egna kapitalet. Genom detta trolleri kan det egna kapitalet aldrig reduceras och banken aldrig riskera att bli insolvent. Voila!

Är är ett utdrag från Reuters:

“Could the Fed go broke? The answer to this question was ‘Yes,’ but is now ‘No,’” said Raymond Stone, managing director at Stone & McCarthy in Princeton, New Jersey. “An accounting methodology change at the central bank will allow the Fed to incur losses, even substantial losses, without eroding its capital.”

Helt otroligt! Om det inte vore så tragiskt så skulle man gapskratta. Hur kan människor gå på sånt här gång på gång?

Här är en kommentar från Jim Sinclair:

This is fancy accounting at the world’s major central bank to hide losses. What makes this any different, in intention, than what Greece did on OTC derivatives?

What are those OTC derivatives on the Federal Reserve Assets Balance Sheet crap worth if you had to mark to NO market them?

You do this only if you anticipate problems, or you are in trouble. Ron Paul is going to have a field day with this totally outrageous development.

Och här är en kommentar från ZeroHedge:

To all who thought that the FASB gives leeway only to banks when fudging their numbers, and boosting their equity capital in ways previously unheard of, we have a surprise. The latest entrant in the “accounting gimmickry” club is none other than the Fed. And since the Fed is not auditable by anyone, it gives itself permission to change and bend the rules in any way it desires.

Following on recent speculation that the Fed could in theory have a equity capital deficiency due to its massive asset book, and its tiny equity buffer, both discussed many times previously on Zero Hedge, the Fed recently announced as part of its January 6 H.4.1 release “an important accounting policy change with the release of its weekly H.4.1 report on January 6 that effectively prevents it from facing a negative capital position even in the event that it incurs substantial losses.”

Here is how Bank of America’s Priya Misra explains this curious, and most certainly politically-motivated development: “The Fed remits most of its net earnings on a weekly basis. Prior to this accounting change, any unremitted earnings due to the Treasury would accrue in the “Other capital” account, but will now be shown in a separate liability line item called “Interest on Federal Reserve notes due to the Treasury.” As a result, any future losses the Fed may incur will now show up as a negative liability (negative interest due to Treasury) as opposed to a reduction in Fed capital, thereby making a negative capital situation technically impossible regardless of the size of the Fed’s balance sheet or how the FOMC chooses to tighten policy.”

And there you have it: instead of reducing the left side of the balance sheet upon the incurrence of losses, the Fed has decided to fudge the right side. And presto. No more possibility of insolvency ever again. Which only means that the Fed’s now ridiculous DV01 of just under $2 billion will in no way prevent the world’s biggest hedge fund from taking proactive steps to actually mitigate rate risk, and in fact will likely encourage it to gamble even more with taxpayer capital.

World Economic Forum (WEF) släppte i förra veckan en smått chockerande rapport där man resonerar att kreditexpansionen (som tog oss från 57 biljarder dollar till 109 biljarder dollar mellan 2000-2010) måste fortsätta och de globala krediterna fördubblas ännu en gång till 200 biljarder dollar mot slutet av 2020 för att att inte hämma den globala tillväxten (läs: undvika en ekonomisk kollaps).

Jag finner knappt några ord för att beskriva hur chockerande detta är. Följande kommentar från ZeroHedge summerar mina spontana tankar helt:

In other words, the world must give up all prudent hope to having a vibrant and stable credit system, and embrace without any doubt the same ludicrous model that led to the kinds of synthetic idiocy that virtually blow up the world when it had $100 trillion in debt, if we even hope to have the kind of growth that explosive credit growth (and nothing else!) afforded the world in the past ten years. Just imagine how this will play out when the total debt is $200 trillion instead. And one wonders why all the institutional whores are against the gold standard, with its fixed limitation on the issuance of credit-money. So much better to live on imaginary promises of repayment, coupled with guarantees of 4% GDP growth in perpetuity until the world certainly blows up all over again, only this time only Mars would be able to bail out earth. No seriously.

Följande kommentar (via Midas) är också extremt passande:

Yes folks that’s right, we “need” $100 Trillion more CREDIT over the next 10 years! Why stop there? Actually the system CANNOT stop there, in fact if you understand the mechanics of today’s fiat financial system, credit creation can NEVER EVER stop. It must continually grow and at an ever more exponentially rapid pace. Period, end of story. It can never stop, that is until it does! You see, in any Ponzi scheme (this one takes the ultimate cake), new “inputs” must continue and can never slow down let alone stop. The current problem is that back in 2006-07 we reached THE global “debt saturation” level and credit creation began to slow. THIS is why the Fed is monetizing debt under it’s QE programs, total credit outstanding MUST expand or the Ponzi scheme is exposed.
Think back 10 or 15 years, $100 Billion was a BIG BIG number, now it is merely chicken feed! As for thoughts of $ Trillions, it was unthinkable. Now we hear the word “quadrillion” used when referring to the size of the derivatives market and trust me, it will not stop there. No, unless the monetary system is changed, “millions” will become commonplace even in supermarkets, “bazillions” will eventually become a new number! Seriously, with this much “money” being talked about and thrown around, thank God for computers because the human mind is incapable of calculating nor fathoming such.

The most humorous thing happening today (for this entire month so far) is that investors are finally catching on and buying REAL Gold and Silver in amounts never seen before, yet the prices have gone down. How can this possibly be? Easy, sell futures which is exactly what is happening. It has worked in the past and is working again now, it will work until……well, until it doesn’t. Do I know when that will be? Of course not but I do know that the day is coming as sure as the Sun will rise tomorrow!