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09Nov

Caution! Market crash could be imminent

Alex Commodities, Finance, Futures, Stocks 0 comment

With growing uncertainty surrounding the European debt crisis, and the contagion spreading to much larger sovereigns, such as Italy, we now see risk aversion back on the table.  US markets are down over 3%, the headlines seem to be getting progressively worse and many fear that the situation could deteriorate much further — giving up much of the gains achieved in October.

Growing concern as market whipsaws

This kind of volatility, both up and down, is historically an indicator of very large market moves.  With the bias largely negative, it seems that a market crash could be coming if no resolution is found for the EU debt implosion.  Alternatively, should a large scale bailout ($2T+) occur, we could see a significant rally, especially within precious metals spot prices and miners.

For investors and traders, this type of price action is stressful.  Seeing fluctuations of multiple percentage points in indices and nearly 10% in stocks can cause forced position liquidation because of stop loss orders being triggered.  For traders, who generally capitalize on multi-day moves rather than moves within a single day, this type of action can cause significant losses should one be caught on the wrong side of the market action.  High frequency trading machines may capture gains, but are not providing liquidity or improving market efficiency, especially during periods of intense market moves.  Instead, evidence seems to be growing that the machine-based traders are making the market less stable and more prone to large price swings.

World view deteriorates

Global markets plunged as well, with Italy down over 9%, Poland down nearly 9%, Germany down over 7% and other European markets leading weakness as stock prices bleed, especially within the financial sector.  The lackadaisical response out of the EU, ECB and IMF leadership seems to be draining confidence and sparking fear in the markets.

US banks have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of exposure to European sovereign debt, banks and other related instruments.  Many have written credit default swaps, a form of insurance that has no capital reserve (see AIG implosion circa 2008) against European debt, exposing them to significant risks should the EU situation worsen.

Broken bonds from backwards economies

Many Western countries now face the prospect of sovereign debt problems, as their economies continue to slow, while investors fear that they will not be able to pay back the debt.  The United States is no exception, as its official debt reaches 100% of GDP, and by some estimates, their total outstanding unfunded liabilities have reached $75 trillion.

Japan has a 200% debt-to-GDP ratio, which is only made possible by the fact that most of their debt is held by Japanese banks and pensioners, but the situation there is deteriorating with growing political and economic instability.  Even China is no exception, as their economy is slowing down and the yield curve on Chinese debt has inverted for the first time — causing serious concern for those that felt China would lead the world out of recession.

The coming crisis

What happens next is not clear, but what is evident is that the world is changing.  Slowing economic growth, the bursting of the largest credit bubble in history, significant deterioration in debt-driven consumption and resource depletion all leads to a potential crisis.  All of the new debt that has been created to attempt to stem the last debt crisis has only exacerbated the underlying structural economic problems we are facing.  Papering over large amounts of fraud within the financial system and ignoring the peril of main street has divided the Western world.  Growing civil unrest and lack of available employment, especially for the young, has created the potential for large scale disruptions (think of the “Occupy” movement, but on a global scale with a significant percentage of the population participating).

I feel that unless we start seeing accountability within the financial sector and governments of the world, prosecution of the enormous fraud, transparency within the political and electoral process and erosion of corporate personhood in so far as money is considered free speech, as well as more regulation of over the counter derivatives, we will look back at the 2008 crisis and think of it as a relatively calm and orderly time within the financial markets compared to what could happen next.

25Sep

Silver’s scary sell-off

Alex Commodities, Economy, Forex, gold and silver, Metals, Technical Analysis 0 comment

Silver and silver-related assets were smashed across the board on Friday as the World Bank and IMF met in Washington, DC to discuss the worsening global crisis.  Other commodities saw sharp declines as well.  More silver was traded that day in any given hour than silver is available on the market for an entire year.  It was an electronic sell-off.  Physical prices now command a 10-20% premium to spot paper prices, the highest in years.  Gold to silver ratio is now over 1:50, the highest in a very long time.

 Predictably news comes out after the trading day (but we must assume the large insiders knew the whole time) that COMEX was raising margins by 15.6% on silver. 

http://www.gold-prices.biz/comex-raises-gold-margins-by-215-silver-margins-by-156/

The problem is the COMEX does not have the silver to deliver, so forced liquidation is the strongest tool they have to bring prices down and take parties who would seek delivery out of the equation.

Silver is still up 46.31% on the year and has strong support in the $30.00 area.  I think we need to see what the price action is when buyers step in and shorts cover.  It could very well move up as fast as it did down (and higher) if we see ECB rate cuts, a Greek bail out, good earnings in the US, emergency Fed easing or other central bank policy movements as well as any geopolitical or event risk scenarios playing out.

Given that even though silver fell to $30.00, but physical silver commands a price of $33-35.00, there is evidence of a growing paper vs. physical price discovery bifurcation. 

http://www.apmex.com/Category/160/Silver_Eagles___Uncirculated_2011__Prior.aspx

As far as my strategy goes, I don’t see any change in the situation for the dollar long term.  The recent strength has been more of a liquidation panic in Europe and foreigners buying dollars because it’s the least bad currency for the moment.  There’s even some rumor of weaker central banks liquidating gold and silver holdings to raise liquidity.

I saw the same pattern of behavior in 2008 and 2009, yet gold and silver are much, much higher now despite the occasional (and sometimes violent) correction.

Over the last 11 years silver and gold have outperformed all sectors of the S&P 500 by many multiples.  There is no paper asset class quite as trusted during times of crisis, either. 

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?t=my&s=SLV&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=SPY (three year chart)

Now, given the potential for further easing by the Fed, ECB, BOJ, BOE, SNB and others, the need to monetize debt in the US to keep the government open (i.e. the necessity for QE3) — without debt monetization the government will go in to a crisis mode where their ability to spend will be limited as interest rates rise because treasuries are sold more than bought.  But we’re not the only country that has to monetize debt.  Keep in mind the US government has over $75 trillion in unfunded liabilities and there’s no ‘economic growth’ scenario that allows these debts to be funded from revenues.

QE3 from the Fed at this point seems like a foregone conclusion once we see a sovereign debt or large bank collapse.  The ECB is also monetizing debt in the Euro zone for a few of the larger PIIGS, the BOE has QE’d in England and there’s a good chance the BOJ and SNB will continue to print money to artificially devalue their currency.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/24/us-imf-ecb-stark-idUSTRE78N1Y220110924

These actions will create a short to intermediate term burst in global money supply — and hot money seeking a high return.  These types of inflationary pressures lead to booms for precious metals.  

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9PU96280.htm

Greece’s default is all but inevitable, and that is going to rock the world and create the need for much, much more liquidity.  This situation will spread throughout Europe and spread here and to Asia.  Lower rates and more stimulus will follow.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/lehman-weekend-redux

Many shops sold out of their silver bars and coins on Friday because the appetite for physical silver was so strong at $30.00 (even though customers gladly paid the $5.00+ premium making purchases $35.00+ per ounce).  In fact I still saw online stores selling silver for $45.00 to $50.00 per ounce.

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/9/23_Sprott_Money_Temporarily_Runs_Out_of_Physical_Silver.html

I believe that the bifurcation in physical and paper prices is important to note because it indicates that there are two markets.  A real market and a phony market.  The phony market is being manipulated downward to an artificially depressed price.

This happened in 2008, too.  But from that low price of $8.00 silver quickly rose to $48.00 in the course of three years, a 600% increase or averaged to 200% per year.

http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/ag3650nyb.html

Gerald Celente, one of the best trend forecasters of our era is now buying physical silver.  He made the announcement on Friday, so I believe that will mean something to the many that follow his advice and watch his investments closely.

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/9/24_Gerald_Celente.html

One year silver chart

Tonight silver is testing the 350 day moving average.  Some continuation selling was to be expected after Friday’s drop, but we’re looking for some consolidation or even a short term reversal due to the very, very oversold condition, combined with the support of the 350 day moving average at 29.57 as well as the appetite that should be present in Asia during this season.

We’re also dealing with price move that is over a four standard deviation event — i.e. something that is extraordinarily rare and it’s punctured the bottom bollinger band, leaving a reversion to the moving average around $37.00-40.00 quite possible if technical buyers come in.

24 hour silver chart Right now silver is trading at $29.83, having found some support at the $29.57 area.

Volume is light as to be expected, but once Sydney and Hong Kong open we’ll get a better idea of what the Asian appetites for metals are after last week’s discount.

Personally, I am tempted to buy silver and silver-related assets given these discounts.  Even if prices are weak short term, I know they will be much, much higher in the intermediate and longer term.

15Sep

Central bank intervention for profit retention?

Alex Banks, Bonds, Business, Finance, Metals, Stocks, Technical Analysis 0 comment

Today we read about Kweku Adoboli, the UBS equities trader that allegedly went rogue and lost the firm $2B in Q3 profits.  We also learned about the ECB effectively using extraordinary measures to prop up insolvent EU banks.  A rumor also floated through the blogosphere that Mr. Adoboli was shorting large amounts of precious metals, specifically silver, through ETFs.  What one has to wonder, given the timing of these events and the downdraft in metals prices today, is if the ECB and/or SNB is helping to support UBS by pushing down metals prices so they can exit the short position with less of a loss to report on their upcoming earnings announcement.

This sounds like a conspiracy theory, right?  I would have thought so, too, many years ago.  However, given the recent and direct Swiss central bank intervention in the Franc and precious metals markets, the dire situation in the EU threatening the monetary union and its currency was well as the threat of a global double dip recession, it seems more than possible that central banks are beginning to exercise their power in the precious metals markets more overtly.

Psychologically it’s a very effective technique.  Hit metals hard on days that they would ordinarily rally to push weak (see leveraged) hands out of the market.  Try to inflict as much technical damage as possible (although at this point no severe damage has been inflicted — but if this continues it will be).

The question is how long could such manipulation last, if that is in fact what’s going on here?  I would personally doubt that such interventions can have staying power — at least not yet.  The SNB hit on precious metals did not last very long, and when priced in Francs gold rallied to a record high.  The previous sell-offs we’ve seen have produced a large amount of buying appetite around $39.00.

Today that seemed to be the case.  I was buying some silver CEFs (closed end funds) when the price hit $39.49.  I felt that a lot of buyers would begin to bite with more conviction as that has been the bottom end of the technical trading ranging silver has been within for the past few weeks.

There is some chance it could break down to $36.00, of course, but with a stop around $38.75, I’ll take a small downside risk given that the upside potential seems to be  about 33% in the short to intermediate term.  Good luck investing and trading, everyone.  And be careful out there.  The sharks are circling.