Friday, April 29, 2011

US Strong Dollar Policy

According to Turbotax Timmy and Gutenberg Bernanke the US currently has a strong dollar policy.

Following is a chart of the US dollar.











I'd hate to see a weak dollar policy.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

April 21, 2011 Update

A quick note as I'm in a hurry.

The US$ would appear to be near a 17 month (74 week) cycle low.

Gold is near a 14 month and 14 week potential cycle crest.

There are a number of Astrological indicators which indicate, at the very least, volatility in currencies and precious metals.

Briefly, heliocentric Mercury starts transit into Sagittarius. Geocentric Mercury is goes stationary direct on April 23.

Venus will be in a transiting T-square with Uranus, Pluto and Saturn from April 22 early May '11. This will probably emphasize debt, and not in a favorable way.

I'll post charts on the week end, time permitting.

Bernanke speaks April 27 2:00pm. Best to listen.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

April 18, 2011 Update

Although we are still looking for a crest in the SP500 late May to mid June the next couple of weeks look particularly volatile. Monday April 18 in particular has Mars opposing Saturn just before the opening which should equate to some very negative energy on Monday. Chart wise there seems to be stiff resistance around 1320 - 1322. If this is broken on good volume the SP500 could advance quickly. Support can be found in the 1300 - 1305 area a break of which could see the indexes looking at the 1275 - 1280 for support. See the following chart for fib retracements.











On a shorter term hourly charts we can see MACD in negative divergence to price from mid March to the April 14 low. The MACD has now made a higher high but is rolling over, short term on good volume. This chart, with the negative Astros, point to a down day on Monday and possibly the early part of the week. See the following hourly chart.















We are also looking for a trough to the major cycle (5-7) week in the next 2 weeks. April 14 could have been it, but should be watched closely.

The next two weeks looks very volatile, with a number of major transits.

In general we seem to be moving from a period where Mars was dominant ( wars, aggression, explosions bah blah) to a Venus period where things of value and attraction dominate. We do have heliocentric Mars conjunct Uranus on April 17, so we could get one more blast.

Geocentrically we have the following Venus aspects
April 20 Venus enters Aries
April 22 Venus conjunct Uranus
April 27 Venus square Pluto
April 29 Venus opposition Saturn.

Any of these could mark a turn. In effect Venus will be forming a T square with Uranus / Pluto / Saturn during the April 22-30 time period. This could be pointing to the debt crisis taking centre stage once again. The FED reports on April 27th.

As stated the next 2 weeks should be volatile. If we had to pick one day for a market turn it would be April 25. If the SP500 is heading down into April 25 look for a reversal up. If the SP500 is up the week of April 18 then April 25 may mark a serious reversal down.

Any Astros dates given should be +- 3 trading days at a minimum, with longer term Astros +- many weeks.

Heliocentric Mercury enters Sagittarius on April 22 and geocentric Mercury goes direct on April 23. Historically the first few days of heliocentric Mercury in Sag are usually positive for Gold and geocentric Mercury going direct negative.

The attached chart shows a recent history, small red x's are helio Mercury in Sag and the blue arrow pointing right is geo Mercury going direct. In addition the moon enters Sagittarius on April 20 which can also be beneficial for Gold.

If Gold starts to go down next week I will bill looking for a quick sharp reversal back up early in the week of April 25th. This would equate to a major cycle low then back up into the last major cycle of this primary cycle.

If Gold continues up the week of April 18 then I would look for a reversal down the week of April 25th.

On the negative side Gold stocks are not keeping up with the advance in Gold. This type of divergence between Gold stocks and Gold prices can turn out to be negative for Gold. At this point the advance seems to be well entrenched and should continue up.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

April 4, 2011 Update

Ignoring Astros for this entry we should have a trading cycle (2-4 weeks after a primary cycle trough) this week. We are currently starting the 3rd week of the primary cycle which bottomed March 16th. Gold seems to be moving sideways, but generally appears week. We are near the end of the period of violent Astros which unfortunately pick up again later in the month.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

You Gotta a Lota Splainin To Do

This is not meant to be an advertisement for the Rolling Stone magazine. This is the first time I have included a note from someone other than myself on this blog but I felt this is a story worth following. It will be particularly interesting to see if it is picked up by the mainstream media or will they be muzzled as per usual.

Why is the Fed Bailing Out Qaddafi?
Taibblog

Franco Origlia/Getty

Barack Obama recently issued an executive order imposing a wave of sanctions against Libya, not only freezing Libyan assets, but barring Americans from having business dealings with Libyan banks.

So raise your hand if you knew that the United States has been extending billions of dollars in aid to Qaddafi and to the Central Bank of Libya, through a Libyan-owned subsidiary bank operating out of Bahrain. And raise your hand if you knew that, just a week or so after Obama’s executive order, the U.S. Treasury Department quietly issued an order exempting this and other Libyan-owned banks to continue operating without sanction.

I came across the curious case of the Arab Banking Corporation, better known as ABC, while researching a story about the results of the audit of the Federal Reserve. That story, which will be coming out in Rolling Stone in two weeks, will examine in detail some of the many lunacies uncovered by Senate investigators amid the recently-released list of bailout and emergency aid recipients – a list that includes many extremely shocking names, from foreign industrial competitors to hedge funds in tax-haven nations to various Wall Street figures of note (and some of their relatives). You will want to see this amazing list when it comes out, so please make sure to check the newsstands in two weeks’ time.

This list became public as a result of an amendment added to the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill that was sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The amendment forced the Federal Reserve to open its books for the first time and make public the names of those individuals and corporations who received emergency loans and bailout monies during the roughly two year period between the crash of 2008 and the passage of the Dodd-Frank bill.

As Bernie’s staff was going through this list, it found, among other things, some $26 billion in extremely cheap loans (as low as one quarter of one percent!) extended to this ABC bank over a period of years, beginning in December of 2007 and continuing through as recently as February of 2010. The senator sent a letter to Ben Bernanke over the winter demanding more information about this loan (among others) but the response he got was completely unhelpful.

When I first started working on this story, one of Sanders’s aides was careful to point out the ABC loans. Later, I took a closer look at the company and found that it was 59% owned by the Central Bank of Libya, which I found very odd, even by the generally insane standards of the bailout era. Why, I wondered, would the Federal Reserve be giving Muammar Qaddafi $26 billion in near-zero interest loans? Exactly how does that address America’s financial problems? What bailout plan could that possibly be part of?

It gets weirder from there. Sanders’s office subsequently found out that ABC is not only exempt from Obama’s sanctions, it has two functioning branches here in New York City. In a letter he sent yesterday evening to Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency chief John Walsh (the banking regulator with purview over the New York branches), Sanders put it this way:

Why would the U.S. government allow a bank that is predominantly owned by the Central Bank of Libya – an institution on which the U.S. has imposed strict economic sanctions – to operate two banking branches within our own borders?

Neither the Fed nor Treasury so far has offered explanations for these loans; the Treasury has so far only explained why ABC was not subject to sanctions and pointed to the March 4th order when I contacted them.

The ABC loans are just one example of the Fed’s bailout madness. Again, there are 21,000 transactions on the Fed’s list of released names, and “every one of these... is outrageous,” as one Sanders aide put it. You will be shocked, for sure, to find out who else is on that list. We’ll have a lot more on those other loans in the next issue of Rolling Stone.

--End of Rolling Stone article--

The following quote would best be labeled - How Things Change and Remain the Same.

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
--Mark Twain. The Mysterious Stranger 1916