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NDX is in a sloppy looking pattern, is dropping into a support zone and needs to hold the moving averages to avoid going from sloppy to bearish. Captains like Alphabet, Facebook and Apple are shaky to bearish and obviously valuations are starting to matter. NDX is down another 1+% in pre-market.
On March 4 we reviewed the technical reasons why the gold sector was launching as opposed to blowing off. This, after articles began appearing calling the rise to that point a doomed parabolic blow off using daily charts. Those calling it a blow off were confused; silver in spring 2011 was a blow off in the terminal sense. But when a parabolic move comes off a bottom, it is an impulsive thrust to change the trend, possibly ending the bear market.
We have long noted that gold is the first mover to a new inflationary phase, as the previous deflationary backdrop gets played out. That is exactly what happened, even though the silver miners have made stunning strides in leading the exciting up move in silver that is currently in process. Silver, in taking over leadership from gold would confirm an inflationary phase. Gold is monetary and silver is an industrial commodity with monetary aspects as well; i.e. it is more positively correlated to inflated economies making the silver-gold ratio a sensitive indicator to inflation.
Very simply, the weekly moving average that contained silver through its bear market has been broken to the upside. That is another booster of our assertion from earlier in the year that any coming blow off would not be terminal (ref. early 2011) but rather the completion of a launch phase off the bottom. This will be the case as long as silver is above the weekly EMA 55.
We do in depth analysis on a weekly basis (and every day in-week) because there is no substitute for working to be right with the market’s evolving situation as opposed to making bias or ego stoked calls in hopes of being right.
The current situation has seen some calling ‘bullish’ on the stock market despite a still intact bear trend (noted repeatedly in NFTRH), people going bullish on commodities despite their “bounce only” (also noted repeatedly) status in the absence of real, market-based inflation signals (which I do think are coming soon) and global markets bouncing within bear trends of varying degrees.
The title of this article is not an assumption that you, astute reader, are little more than a robot following the direct and implied commands of other robots when trying to make logical sense of the state of modern financial markets. Personally, I have found that I need to stay on a path of post-deprogramming maintenance in order to stay right with a complex market backdrop.
On an inward-looking basis, we as investors and traders are faulty humans going up against robots (Ref. Rise of the Quantitative Robots) that are much smarter than we are with numbers, with data mining and with extrapolation. What do we have, puny little human brains with all associated biases, ego distortions and other faults? Yes, that is us.
