We began the week by making a ballsy prediction about the precious metals complex. We believed a major bottom could happen this week. In the wake of the European debt crisis and potential “credit events,” the precious metals became extremely oversold based on a number of metrics. Technically, we saw that Gold and Silver were nearing the December lows which produced a good rally. The gold stocks were nearing the 50% retracement of their 2008-2011 bull move. The combination of an extreme oversold condition and technical support usually produces bottoms. It wasn’t a difficult call but putting it on paper was. With the low in, the question now becomes, is this an interim bottom or will it be the major low we initially expected?

With Greece potentially on the brink of exit from the Eurozone before year’s end, a lot of analysis out there has turned to what the consequences of such an event would be, and, specifically, what punishment Greece would receive from the EU and other international organizations, such as the IMF and perhaps even NATO. The general line of thinking here is that Europe will make such a devastating example out of Greece that no one else will dare to question the status quo setup ever again. While Greece is dragged down the Green Mile in shackles to its final destination, all the other prisoners will watch with an unmistakable sense of dread, and the ceiling lights will ominously flicker as the “juice” is turned on, electro-frying Greece into a crispy black corpse.

Simit Patel writes:
I feel it is imperative for all market participants to have a general understanding of how JPM’s hedge blew up, something that some espouse as a black swan (think LTCM in 1998 & probably the exposing of MFGlobal’s corzining of investor capital to cover losses on sour speculative bets). The MSM has been quick to cover this story on JPM’s alleged felony with regards to its risk management and how a "hedge turned speculative". Whilst there are bits of true facts and opinions presented, a good chunk of it is quite literally bosom-dung. Zerohedge has put up a meticulously detailed analytical piece on how things went wrong and puts the CIO (chief investment office) decision making tree in soft focus – A must read for folks who want the fresh juice of the entire edifice on a grand scale. I’m merely going to share my analysis which contains alot of the stuff in Zerohedge’s piece but also delve deeper into where more explanation is warranted. This isn’t child’s content, it is deep stuff (think quantitative finance) so take some time to really understand every sentence in this post and in Zerohedge’s piece.

Why Read: Because in our fiat currency world continuing GDP growth is of huge importance.
Featured Article: An article earlier this week reported GDP growth for both the 17 country Eurozone and the 27 country European Union was 0.0% in Q1 2012. The European Union includes the 17 Eurozone countries.

All eyes are on Greece which is heading toward national elections six weeks after the last vote. Many feel that a Greek euro exit would be a chance to cauterize a festering wound and move on. There are also those that feel that Greece could be the first of several dominoes to fall, much larger economies such as Spain, Italy, for example.

While it might not look like it now, the most investable trend over the next 20 years is going to be in the resource sector, the renewable and non-renewable resources, the minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass a wealthier and growing global population is increasingly demanding from finite supplies and already strained production capabilities.

Gold stocks have been pummeled mercilessly this month, their price action looking almost apocalyptic.  The psychological stress spawned by such extreme weakness is intense, breaking the wills of this sector’s few remaining bulls.  This week their selling cascaded into a full-blown capitulation, a mass surrender by weary investors.  While exceedingly miserable, these events flag major long-term bottoms.

In an interview with Louis James, John Hathaway discusses the US’s economic outlook and why he’s delighted by the current bearish sentiment toward gold.
Louis James: Ladies and gentleman, thanks for tuning in. We’re at the Casey Research Recovery Reality Check Summit. We’re talking with John Hathaway, one of the more successful fund investors – institutional investors – in our precious metals field near and dear to my heart. John, can you give us a quick version of what you talked about here, for those who didn’t make it to the conference?

Apple (AAPL) is one of the most actively traded stocks currently. For the trader who trades only stock, there are two major difficulties in executing trades in this stock:
1. It is breathtakingly expensive.
2. It exhibits periods of neck snapping volatility exposing the trader to substantial losses if he gauges the direction wrong and does not act quickly.

Solyndra famously imploded, the price of polysilicon dropped 60%, and a glut of natural gas has made it the "new" alternative energy source.
But make no mistake about it: alternative energy stocks are going to be long-term winners-especially for solar power investors.

Don Miller writes:
Ever since the Dutch East India Company became the first to issue stocks and bonds to the public in 1602, investors have seen initial public offerings (IPOs) as the road to riches.
The current hype surrounding the Facebook IPO is just one example.

Martin Hutchinson writes:
The elections on May 6 only made the Eurozone’s problems even worse. The French and the Greeks have rejected sensible policies in favor of self-delusion.
Those elections, and the failure of Greece to form a government, have actually moved the Eurozone crisis one step further – from potential tragedy into a complete farce.

I was recently on CNBC discussing the Facebook valuation, which I believe is priced for out-of-this-world perfection. The easiest way to assess the insanity of Facebook’s valuation is by comparing it to Google’s. Facebook is set to go public at a sweet valuation of $100 billion, and it has estimated revenue for 2012 of about $4 billion.

Last April gold investment analysts where excited to see a new institutional player enter the gold market. The University of Texas Investment Management Co. took delivery of nearly $1bn of gold bullion into a New York vault. The reason gold analysts were so interested was because large institutional players had been largely absent from their market and their huge purchasing power had therefore not had its potentially significant positive effect on the gold price.

WHOLESALE MARKET gold prices climbed as high as $1594 an ounce during Monday morning’s London trading, jumping 1.5% in the first two hours, while Eurozone stocks looked to have stemmed four days of losses despite Greece and Spain seeing negative ratings decisions.
A day earlier, Dollar prices to buy gold jumped 2% in two hours during Thursday’s US trading.

The World is still going to Hell but LOOK – FACEBOOK!
Ah, Facebook will save us. They have magical powers and will turn around the $60,000,000,000,000 Global equities markets with their $16,000,000,000 IPO, right? I mean, who are we to question the power of Social Media – probably the single biggest drainer of productivity in the history of all mankind?

Looking at the big picture for spot gold, we see that the next cycle low is due in about 4 weeks. In other words, the current cycle that started at the end of December is about 85% complete.

That means that the strength off of yesterday’s low at $1526.98 not only represented a deep retest of the December 29 low at $1522.48, it likely also satisfies the first coordinate in the next cycle bottoming period ahead of a new up-leg in the larger over-riding bull market in gold.

Why Read: Because Youth Unemployment has to be at or near the top of both near-term and long-term economic issues that must be addressed, or if they aren’t, bring the ‘edge of the economic and societal cliff’ ever closer.
Featured Article: A May 14 article focuses on Europe’s youth unemployment numbers. The article reports that not only do many European countries currently suffer from serious youth unemployment rates, but also points out that while this may be a somewhat exacerbated problem currently, it is not a new phenomenon in many European countries. For example, the article reports that while youth unemployment rates have reached 51% in Greece and Spain, 36% in Italy, and 30% in Ireland, the average youth unemployment rate for the past 40 years has been:

Forget the anemic latest US jobs report – the world is in play, and the election of Francois Hollande as the President of France may do more to determine US unemployment rates (and global investment results) in the next year than anything that Ben Bernanke and US government policies will accomplish. 
There is a near-term risk that a process has been set in motion that could plunge the entire globe into currency chaos and economic depression within the next year, with the failure to form a government in Greece acting as only one of a number of possible triggers.

Around the year 1650 A.D. the word highwaymen entered our language. It referred to robbery committed on a public road against travelers. Now we use the phrase “highway robbery” for which we pay the tolls to travel on modern day roads. The highwaymen alas are among us and we have elected them. At such times it would not take much more in the destruction of mining equities to make investors feel as if they have been seduced by sweet talk and abandoned to the wolves of Wall Street by latter day highwaymen.

David Zeiler writes:
Hoping to expand its reach, Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) is testing a store-within-a-store concept with both Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT).
Although both retailers have already been selling Apple merchandise, the new "micro-stores" will expand the current offerings (with the exception of Mac computers) and create a product experience more akin to an Apple Store.

Shah Gilani writes:
Face it, you want it. It seems that everyone wants a piece of the Facebook IPO.
But, can you handle the truth? Will the hyped sensationalism be a boon or a boondoggle?
I’m not going to tell you what to do, whether you should buy Facebook sooner rather than later. That’s up to you.

THE WHOLESALE MARKET gold price jumped at the start of New York trade on Thursday, cutting the week’s previous 3.3% dive to 5-month lows in half as the Euro fell and Eurozone stock markets slumped once again.
The gold price touched $1558 per ounce before easing $3 lower. Silver did not follow, failing to break this morning’s earlier Dollar high at $27.86 per ounce.

At its simplest and most basic, global warming theory (called "anthropogenic global warming" theory or AGWT) is as idiot-friendly as the official story of what happened on September 11, 2001 in the USA. Five airplanes were hijacked by dangerous Islamic fundamentalists by order of Afghanistan’s Taliban or only with their friendly help. They flew around for rather a long time but America was so terrified no fighter planes were sent to bring down the hijacked planes. Two of the planes disappeared, but three were crashed into carefully chosen targets, not including nuclear power plants, oil refineries, pesticide factories, the White House or suchlike. Three immense tower blocks in New York then collapsed, one of them without being hit by an airplane and the Pentagon was slightly damaged, possibly not by an airplane. Afghanistan was then invaded in a colonial war rampage, by the USA and some other countries described as "democratic".

Well, my hat is off to the global central planners for averting the next stage of the unfolding financial crisis for as long as they have. I guess there’s some solace in having had a nice break between the events of 2008/09 and today, which afforded us all the opportunity to attend to our various preparations and enjoy our lives.
Alas, all good things come to an end, and a crisis rooted in ‘too much debt’ with a nice undercurrent of ‘persistently high and rising energy costs’ was never going to be solved by providing cheap liquidity to the largest and most reckless financial institutions. And it has not.

We have a request for the politicians in Greece. Please go bankrupt, as soon as possible! Let us have the pain done with. To the Euro zone: Throw them out. The world needs a good example of just how bad Keynesian induced poverty can be. The Western economies would probably be better off with the citizens of Greece living in absolute poverty as a clear example of how not to do it. Keynesian socialists will not save the pensions of the Greeks. They will insure that they end. Get it over with, so investors can move on to more important matters.

What Greek Elections Now Mean
Greece cannot form a government so expect elections within a month. We have come to the point where the bad news is out -the markets are telling us that Greece will likely leave the Eurozone and possibly the euro as their 10-year debt continues to trade at 27%. They may not pay out €436 million to creditors and keep it, fearing they will not get the next bailout tranche. Reneging on the obligation also would constitute a default triggering derivatives contracts and clauses requiring the settlement of other un-swapped bonds. Meantime the country has no government to make the choice. The country may run out of money by early July. The standoff has reignited concern that Greece will renege on pledges to cut spending as required by the terms of its two bailouts negotiated since May 2010

After the financial crisis in 2008, “Too-Big-To-Fail” banks had to go. In 2006, the four largest banks – J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo – held 33% of U.S. bank assets. Now, they hold 41% of U.S. bank assets and grow by the minute.
The Federal Reserve is, at least on paper, the country’s leading bank regulator. Instead, it behaves like the TBTF banks’ turbocharger. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is full of talk, and nothing else:

There’s no shortage of books about trading these days, and you could read for months before you come across one that might apply to your trading style.
The free 45-page eBook The Best of Trader’s Classroom is specifically for Elliott wave traders and saves you time in getting the knowledge you want.

India’s HDFC Bank (NYSE: HDB) reported strong first-quarter earnings growth of 30 percent year over year. Fee growth also picked up by 25 percent YoY. Loan growth was a little lower at 21 percent YoY, because of the slowdown and uncertainty in the Indian economy. That said, retail loans increased by 55 percent, indicating stronger than expected consumer demand.

North American natural gas currently sells for half its five-year average price on the near-term New York Mercantile Exchange futures contract.
And that’s after a rally the past two weeks from a low point of just USD1.90 per million British thermal units, reached Apr. 19.

Don Miller writes:
Innovations in biotechnology are evolving at the speed of light.
In fact, astonishing advancements in biotech have transformed the way we practice medicine. Leading-edge biotech products and breakthroughs are literally saving thousands of lives every day.

When you’ve been working the markets as long as I have, you learn that the biggest dangers are always found in a place just over the horizon.
It’s why I spend my time hunting for stories, news items and opinions that in the old days were considered far “below the fold.”

Shah Gilani writes:
As I discussed in Part One, the sky is the limit when it comes to mobile wallet technology.
The big brand credit card issuers: American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and Discover Card, along with every other card issuer and wannabe credit extension intermediary are all already into the mobile wallet space.

David Galland, Casey Research writes: For pretty much everyone, no matter where they are located in the economic strata, few if any questions are more germane to making plans for the future than whether the US and other major global economies are in recovery.
Getting the answer to that question right is of special importance to investors and businesses.

Although he drank Diet Coke rather than fine wines, preferred chocolate bars to ripe and smelly French cheeses and in front of the Pope was so squeaky cool, modern and arrogant that he checked for messages on his Blackberry (if he really knew how to use a Blackberry), French voters plucked up enough courage to evict the brash, egotistical and hyperactive President Bling-Bling, the so-called Hyper President from the Elysee Palace. After just one term in office this was courageous – the last time it happened was in 1981- but Sarkozy was out. He was finished along with his less-than-respected Italian supermodel spouse, so proud of having been a live-in sex toy of Mick Jagger (or possibly Keith Richards). Whatever her horizontal claims to fame, she was a lousy singer.

We would first like to give a quick update on the state of fundamental data and policitcal situation before we dive deeper into technical charts and forex setups.
French Election
With 51.7% of the vote, the socialist Hollande has narrowly won the French presidential election. At the election to the National Assembly due to take place in June, his side should win the majority needed to govern. However, Hollande’s victory makes the battle to contain the sovereign debt crisis even more complex. Hollande largely ignores France’s economic problems; the French economy is likely to drift further southwards. It will also make it even harder for France and Germany to agree a common line. The ECB will continue to de facto finance the peripheral countries by printing money for longer than many had feared.

Last week I held a hearing to examine the various proposals that have been put forth both to mend and to end the Fed. The purpose was to spur a vigorous and long-lasting discussion about the Fed’s problems, hopefully leading to concrete actions to rein in the Fed.

So far, 10 European political leaders out of 17 have been ousted out of office like a falling dominos in a little more than a year.
The issue that has angered voters other than unemployment is austerity. We know from personal finances that when we overspend, we must cut back, pay our debts and rebuild our savings. That’s the prudent thing to do and that’s what the austerity school preaches. But what happens if the financial hole is so deep that there is no way to climb out by reasonable cutting back and saving? That’s when you declare bankruptcy and your creditors share the pain. The laws of capitalism decree that if you don’t assess risk correctly, you lose money. The conclusion is that austerity has to come with a mechanism for default, which is not the case in Europe.

Prior to the open on May 7, we discussed concerns about Greece (GREK) and outlined evidence of slowing momentum in stocks. Since then, the S&P 500 has dropped 31 points. On the morning of May 15, some better than expected data came from Germany with GDP growing 0.5% in the first quarter versus expectations of 0.1%. As shown below, the German DAX Index (EWG) is having trouble holding on to its early morning gains (as of 7:35 a.m. EDT). If the DAX cannot rally on better than expected news, it is not a good sign for risk assets in general.

InformedTr​ades writes: Is the Exodus for Euro project indeed nigh? Anti-bailout voices have vehemently espoused so but there are two sides to every coin (or drachma). The fundamental picture hasn’t changed by a great deal since I started writing about Europe’s extreme pilgrimage through fire and brimstone. However with the passage of time and the very recent rhetorical jawboning and haranguing, the schism between the world’s delusional make-believe and reality has shrunk; the gap is being bridged further by fast paced developments in the political arena of Greece and France, serving as a catalyst for the truth.

Sure the economy is still a mess, unemployment is high, civil services and pensions are being slashed, a record number of people are on food stamps, and families are losing homes. But Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, does his best to distract the United States from these unpleasant realities.

WHOLESALE MARKET gold bullion prices dipped below $1550 an ounce for the first time since December on Tuesday – a fall of 7% since the start of this month – before regaining some ground by lunchtime in London.
"The bear channel support had been at $1581," say technical analysts at Scotia Mocatta, the bullion banking division of Bank of Nova Scotia.

After the Greek elections struck fear into the hearts of the global banksters, the fallout remains uncertain. If the next Greek election produces an anti-austerity government, Greece will almost certainly make a speedy exit from the euro. If this happens — and it is looking increasingly inevitable — the consequences for the global economy are spectacularly gloomy. Yet U.S. media and U.S. politicians are largely silent on the issue, almost as if nothing were happening.

As I was reading of yet another spectacular mismatch between bank managers’ competence and their remuneration, and this time at JP Morgan no less, I realized there is a simple solution which really could be implemented.
Make the cost of regulation zero – or very nearly – for unlimited liability partnerships. Then let judicious self-interest, exercized by the partners themselves, do the rest.

THE PRICE OF GOLD and gold futures dropped yet again Monday morning, recording the seventh drop in nine trading days in May so far as industrial commodities, global stock markets and the Euro currency all sank amid Athens’ failure to negotiate a new coalition government.
Silver bullion also fell hard, touching $28.44 per ounce and losing 8.9% from the start of this month.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,563.00, EUR 1,213.79 and GBP 972.62 per ounce. Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,580.75, EUR 1,221.69 and GBP 980.98 per ounce.
Gold fell $12.70 to close at $1,581/oz in New York on Friday. Gold has fallen again today and has now erased the gains for the year. Gold edged up in early Asian trading as bargain hunters lifted prices from four month lows, but gains were capped and prices gradually fell and falls continued in European trading.

Normally catching a bottom is not difficult. Bottoms tend to occur instantly while market tops form during a process. Yet, I’ve found that bottoms of long-term significance do not occur instantly. Like tops, they can take time to develop. For example, think about late 2008 to early 2009. Commodities hit their price low in December but the bottoming process began in October and wasn’t complete until May. Emerging markets hit their low in November but the process began in October and ended in March. Returning to the present, we see that Gold and Silver look set to retest their late December lows. Our work leads us to argue that the metals will successfully retest their lows and soon emerge from what in the future will be considered a major bottom in-line with 2008, 2005 and 2001.

Greece, the tin pot tail of Europe appears to wagging the economic dog of Europe at will as their inability to appoint a pro-austerity government has failed. This situation is further exasperated by France, with its newly elected ‘no austerity’ leader, stating that he will spend more now and not less in an attempt to boost economic activity if France. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is now toast after suffering a significant blow as voters in Germany’s largest state rejected her austerity policies. 

The biggest news in the airline sector of late is probably the announcement by Delta Airlines to buy a Phillips 66 refinery in Trainer, PA.  Delta will pay $150 million for the 180,000 barrels per day (bpd) facility, spend an additional $100 million to upgrade the plant, and get $30 million in state subsidies for infrastructure and to create jobs.

Adam Waldman writes: Whilst farmland investing may seem to some to be a bit of an exotic option, the reality is that there is an increasingly compelling case for adding this asset class to the alternative investments bucket of your portfolio.  One of the major reasons for our bullishness on farmland investment is the availability of quality farmland. As the graph below from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) clearly demonstrates, the amount of arable farmland has already shrunk and will continue to do so.

Over the weekend, there was little in the way of good news coming from Greece. According to Bloomberg:

Greece’s biggest anti-bailout party, Syriza, said for the second time in as many days that it won’t join a unity government, pushing the country closer to new elections that have sparked concerns about a euro-area exit.

Nine-MSN, in a story dated May 14, also gives little encouragement relative to progress in Greece:

Emergency Greek cabinet talks have yielded no clear progress, raising the prospect of new elections that could scupper reforms and drive the country out of the eurozone. If a cabinet cannot be formed by Thursday, when parliament convenes, new elections will have to be called in June.

As I’ve noted in previous articles, politics, not economics, rule Europe. What I mean by this is that most major decisions in Europe are determined by political agendas that ignore economic and financial realities.
This is at the core of the “welfare state” mentality that permeates Europe as a whole. The EU in general is comprised of an aging population that is more concerned about receiving the pensions/ health benefits/ social payouts that were promised to them by the system than anything else.

In light of the top of the multi-decade bull market and the recurring bear market massacres since the top, investors are increasingly jaded and skeptical. Stocks need to deliver an acceptable dividend stream to satisfy the growing investor preference for income. Investors want value for their money and that means sustainable dividend income at the right price. Combining the principles of value investing with market cycle tracking allows investors to identify value and the most opportune times to buy it.

For quite some time in this letter I have been making the case that for the eurozone to survive, the European Central Bank would have to print more money than any of us can now imagine. That the sentiment among European leaders was that they were prepared for such a move was clear – except for Germany, which is haunted by fears of a return to the days of the Weimar Republic and hyperinflation.

Another great week of volatility, which is what traders want to trade, although we are perched now on the edge and an important choice needs to be made, very similar to what happened last year around this time.
I left readers with this chart from last weeks’ article

In recent weeks, while the eurozone has suffered escalating levels of systemic stress in government bond markets and its banking system, the gold price has fallen under $1,600. One would have thought that – but for the occasional fat-finger trade – gold would rise in all this instability, not fall. Putting aside short-term considerations, the simple reason has to be that the investment establishment, which has bought into the bond market bubble, does not believe that gold is any longer an alternative to paper money.

The US market gapped down at the open on monday to SPX 1364. Then proceeded to make lower downtrend lows but rebounded to that level, or 2 points higher, every day this week. It was a somewhat volatile week with a range between SPX 1343 and 1374. In the end the SPX/DOW lost 1.5%, and the NDX/NAZ lost 0.8%. Foreign markets were mixed with the DJ World index down 2.1%, Asia down 3.5%, and Europe up 0.3%. Economic reports for the week remained on the downside with negatives outpacing positives 6 to 4. On the uptick: consumer credit, a budget surplus, consumer sentiment and the WLEI. On the downtick: wholesale inventories, export/import prices, the PPI, plus jobless claims rose and the trade deficit widened. Next week there are reports on housing, the CPI, industrial production and the FOMC minutes. Best to your week!

John Roth writes writes: I am a male over 60 and have [or had] a serious health problem that I tried to ignore for the last three years. I tried every holistic treatment, supplement, vitamin and herb under the sun.
During that period my gastrointestinal tract quit working three times. I had a lot of trouble breathing and although I had the urge nothing would come out of my body. You get the picture.

Probably this is the first time that world financial market is feeling the heat of Greek election. Election result in France was not problematic for market but post election situation in Greece is getting too much complicated. Investors were eagerly looking to get positive information from Greece but they were disappointed with the outcomes, in fact still there is no outcome. Market is calculating on different options, especially after remark from German finance minister.

French election outcome was not much disturbing but Greece is again creating the fear due to their inconclusive result or it will be better to say that Greek voters voted against the bailouts and those austerity measures. German minister’s remark about Greece may fuel lots of calculations. Market is speculating that Greece may quit Euro but here the important thing is what the Euro zone authorities are thinking! Earlier I was confused about holding back of 1bn euros of rescue money but as situation is developing, now it is quite understandable. 

This analysis continues on from my last article in light of the recent French and Greek elections where voters rejected economic austerity in favour of money printing Inflation stealth debt default as politically an smoke and mirrors Inflationary depression is being seen as far more palatable for populations than a deflationary depression slow motion economic collapse. However to be able to print money inline with the true state of the respective competitiveness of euro-zone economies, then these countries governments have no choice but to exit the euro-zone, or be forced out as they one by one fail to follow through on agreed austerity measures.

Major central banks around the world are employing historically loose monetary policy to prop up the fundamentally flawed fractional reserve banking sector artificially. As cases in point, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank have each dropped bank funding interest rates to almost zero over the last few years. 

Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist, Casey Research writes: Yesterday, I made a prediction that should scare a lot of investors.
I predicted a massive loss in market valuation for some of North America’s largest energy producers. You might own some of these names yourself.

Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist, Casey Research writes: If you think the bloodbath is over for natural gas stocks, think again…
Despite falling 50% over the past year, many natural gas stocks are about to enter another major decline.
And if you know what’s going on here, you can use this coming decline to make huge capital gains over the next 12 months.

Since the housing bubble burst spectacularly in late 2007, many analysts have been actively seeking out the next likely explosion. Rest assured, it will be related to debt in some way. US Treasuries, credit cards, and potentially another disaster on Wall Street thanks to over-leveraging have all been mentioned as potential leading candidates. However, there is another bubble out there and it too is debt related. This one, in my opinion, has far greater consequences because it involves a group that is the least financially able to deal with the ramifications. I’m talking about student loans and the massive bubble that has been expanding for at least the past decade.

As the US Treasury curve sits near all-time highs the question on every investors mind is what happens next. Can Treasury yields move lower? In real terms when adjusted for inflation yields are negative. In other words you are losing money on an inflation adjusted basis to lend your money to the US Government.

Consumers understandably like to see prices for commodities decline, the more the merrier, particularly gasoline and energy costs.
Many analysts also take commodity price declines as a positive for the economy, on the theory that consumers will have more spending money in their pockets, and manufacturers will have lower costs, so hopefully greater earnings.

Spot gold plunged to a new reaction low at $1573.01 in overnight trading, but has since rebounded to $1582/83. On further inspection, let’s notice that the overnight new low hit and reversed off of the lower "support" line of the March-May down-slanted channel … amidst a glaring 4-hour RSI momentum divergence.
My pattern and momentum work indicate that the down-leg from the May 1 high at $1672.10 to today’s low at $1573.01 has the right look of completion (notwithstanding the likelihood of a retest or even a press to a marginal lower low).

Gold has had a rough time lately, grinding relentlessly lower.  Such technical weakness has naturally spawned increasingly bearish psychology.  This has led to a fringe view growing in popularity that gold’s mighty secular bull has already given up its ghost.  If these new-bear arguments are correct, gold’s secular bull had to peak last August.  But was that latest topping gold-bull-climax worthy?  Not even close.

Last week’s media headlines focused on how the election results in France and Greece reflected a wave of rising public resistance across Europe to the austerity programs being championed by Germany, the IMF, and the EU. Less notice has been given to Germany’s internal revolt against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative policies at home and abroad. Elections in the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein just ended the dominance there of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDP/CDU) while emboldening the center-left Social Democrats (SDP), hard-left Greens, and libertarian Free Democrats (FDP). Those results are expected to be repeated at this Sunday’s ballot in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest state.

In December 2011, the European Central Bank (ECB) attempted to paper over the debt crisis. As noted by the Wall Street Journal on April 18, “Europe’s bold program to defuse its financial crisis by injecting cash into the banking system is running out of steam”.
Since the credit markets in Spain and Italy have shown renewed signs of strain, the timing for elections in France and Greece was less than ideal for policymakers. On Friday morning, there were rumblings from Europe giving some basis for optimism to the post-election situation in Greece.

WHOLESALE MARKET gold prices touched their lowest level since the first week of January Friday, hitting $1574 an ounce before recovering some ground, while stocks and commodities fell and US Treasury bonds gained, with dealers in major gold buying countries reporting continued limited demand for precious metals.
Silver prices fell to $28.54 an ounce – also a four-month low, and 6.1% down on last Friday’s close.

Deborah Baratz writes:
Global semiconductor sales have been pretty listless lately, but new data suggests a turnaround is on the horizon for this sector.
In fact, one new forecast by research firm IDC predicts the rate of growth in the semiconductor sector could potentially double in the latter part of this year.

Keith Fitz-Gerald writes:
Gold’s hot. Then it’s not. Now what?
Where did the love for the shiny metal go?
Now the gold bugs are crying, and the "I told you so crowd" is warming up in the wings.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,580.75, EUR 1,221.69 and GBP 980.98 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,590.00, EUR 1,228.37, and GBP 987.39 per ounce.
Gold rose $3.00 or 0.18% in New York yesterday and closed at $1,594.00/oz. Gold ticked lower in Asia and in Europe and breached yesterday’s intraday low of $1,580/oz.

News that JP Morgan lost $2 billion trading synthetic credit securities is spreading like wild fire. Shares of JPM are deeply in the red. The stench of Volcker is in the air:
“It’s a pretty stunning admission for a company that prides itself on its risk management systems and the strength of its balance sheet. The timing couldn’t be worse for the industry. At the end of the day, it will have ramifications across the broker-dealer community.” Sterne Agee analyst Todd Hagerman.

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:
We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, spoke with Bloomberg TV’s Betty Liu and said that, "I think the market will have difficulties to move up strongly unless we have a massive QE3 and if it moves and makes the high above 1422, the second half of the year could witness a crash, like in 1987."
Faber went on to say that, "I do not have a high opinion of the U.S. government, but the bureaucrats in Brussels make the government in the U.S. look like an organization consisting of geniuses."

We’re getting whiplash from all the political changes in Europe, neo-Nazis in an unstable government in Greece and a changing of the guard in France– "adieu" to Nicolas Sarkozy. We see plenty of reasons for holding on to our long-term gold positions despite the clobbering the yellow metal got on Wednesday down to a four-month low. The euro tumbled this week against the dollar in the worst run since 2008. There is an intense resurgence of political risk in Europe and a couple of months of weak jobs numbers in the U.S. All that has put stimulus back on the table. Another item on the table is the risk of a Greek euro exit, which has risen to as high as 75 percent; according to Citigroup Inc. We also see a rising anti-austerity tide gaining ground in Europe and the abolishing of a gold excise duty in India, all favorable for gold.

WHOLESALE MARKET prices to buy gold and silver repeated yesterday’s rally in London trade after a slight drop Thursday morning, rising back above $1594 and $29.30 per ounce respectively as platinum and palladium also stemmed this week’s sharp drops.

"Technically, many [precious metals] are now oversold," says a note from dealers Intl FC Stone, pointing to chart analysis and noting that gold trading volume on the Globex futures platform was 40% above the last month’s quiet average on both Tuesday and Wednesday.

Don Miller writes:
If you don’t know already, it’s time to learn something all serious investors should know: how to trade the VIX Indicator (VIX).
While most investors are scrambling to figure out whether the market is headed up or down, savvy pros use the VIX both as means of protection and a source of profit.

David Zeiler writes:
Texas Rep. Ron Paul knows he can’t win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, but that was only part of his end game.
Sure, winning the nomination would have been a plus, but Ron Paul’s strategy for years has been to bring his libertarian, anti-debt, anti-inflation views square into the mainstream of American politics.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,590.00, EUR 1,228.37, and GBP 987.39 per ounce. Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,585.50, EUR 1,221.87 and GBP 984.17 per ounce.
Silver is trading at $29.13/oz, €22.60/oz and £18.15/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,492.73/oz, palladium at $612.20/oz and rhodium at $1,300/oz.

Although it has taken nearly a century, it seems that the entire spectrum of the American political establishment has finally realized the destructive power of the Federal Reserve System. Whether left, right, or libertarian, politicians are lining up to attack Ben Bernanke and the Fed’s destructive monetary policy. Where there is disagreement or lack of understanding, however, is on why the Fed’s monetary policy is destructive, how it harms the economy, and what should be done about it. Today’s hearing will examine the various proposals that have been put forth both to mend and to end the Fed. It is my hope that this hearing will spur a vigorous and long-lasting discussion about the Fed’s problems, a discussion which will lead to concrete actions once and for all to rein in the Fed.

Unlike global warming, which is deservedly losing credibility and traction very fast, institutional and political inertia keeps the drive for sustainability in apparent high gear, but the definition of sustainability and how we achieve it is now heavily politicized and an open guess.

Here are a few patterns that might explain the current fall in the gold price, as well as, provide the possible way forward.
Below is a graphic (all charts are from fxstreet.com) which compares the current pattern on gold (about July 2011 to current) to a 2007 pattern: