The steel stocks look weak, and this miner is a big supplier to this industry. It broke the 50 EMA today, and if it closes below that level, I am placing a short on it. 47.50 is my target, although the 200 MA will be an intermediate stop IMO
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
Slicker Than Snake Oil (by Trade Flight Plan)
Irish whiskey, inventory levels, currency wars, and FOMC – whoopee!
Other than that, crude oil has been light, sweet, and volatile. As a quick followup to our prior post, we continue to watch the net positions of commercial entities on CL (now trading the CLF1 contract). Imagine our surprise when we see the commercials are actually increasing their net short positions to record levels based on the latest weekly Commitment of Traders (COT) info. These are airlines, producers, transportation companies, and other big hedgers.
Same rules apply as last time:
Red=commercial traders, yellow=small spec traders, blue=large non-commercial traders.
Green vertical lines show relatively high COT readings by the commercials. Red vertical lines show relatively low COT readings for these slick oil hedgers.
Just for kicks, we highlight with nice blue circles what happened previously when commercial net short positions hit new lows.
We cannot short at lows, and the snake oil salesmen haven't made it easy to get short, doing things like initiating the moves during Asian or European session hours at some crazy-o-clock in the middle of the night, blaming it on a supply disruption in Irish Whiskey as an excuse. But boy, any micro bull intraday retracements sure look interesting, especially if we can get some confirmation on smaller intraday time periods.
Even if all else fails, oil bulls would have to believe that somehow, this time things will be different and nearly 200,000 oil contracts net short of the nastiest, slickest, smartest traders in this business are just kidding. The best part is, an increase in the yellow line representing small speculators tells us that retail traders have been buying it.
Of course, in these markets anything is possible. In October/early November they marked price up by nearly $5/barrel before selling off, just to prove they could. The entire time, the commercials just kept establishing even larger net short positions. Someone's either going to get taken to the cleaners or make a fortune. Just stay alert if you're trading stuff based on oil, like USO, RIG, BP, XOM, etc. If CL sells off, they stand to make a nice profit. If not, end of year could get interesting.
Chart on SLV (Mike Paulenoff)
Since yesterday morning's pivot low at 24.44, right off of the Aug-Nov up trendline, the iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV) has climbed to 25.33 (+3.6% so far), in what looks like the initiation of either of two scenarios. One would be a recovery or intervening upleg within a larger corrective, or digestion, period. The other would be the start of a new bull leg within the ongoing bull phase that will propel the SLV to new highs well above 28.72.
In either scenario, yesterday's pivot low at 24.44 ended a 15% corrective leg and started a rally phase that has a minimum upside target zone of 25.90-26.20 in the hours/days ahead."
Originally published on MPTrader.com.
Video Chart on Rising Dollar (by Mike Paulenoff)
Rising dollar & rising rates negative for the commodity sector, in particular gold. See video below, which discusses GLD and GDX.
Originally published on MPTrader.com.
A Little Long – EPP
How’d that quote go? – “Don’t fight the Fed…” As of Friday, I am still net short, but have more longs (as a %) than I have had since 2007.
To be clear, I fundamentally believe most Western economies are circling the bowl; and the Fed is dumping water in, praying it can keep the turd from going down… it’s just a matter of time.
Since mid-late October sometime, I’ve been taking small bites of EPP (iShares MSCI Pacific ex-Japan) on any drop. From the iShares site: http://us.ishares.com/product_info/fund/overview/EPP.htm
Pros: Given the 20% inflation Ben & Co. just dumped into the bowl, I like the geographic breakdown:
Australia 65.46%
Hong Kong 19.29%
Singapore 12.67%
New Zealand 0.79%
Macau 0.64%
China 0.27% (<– and specifically that this is not a large % of the mix)
Additionally, as the world hunger for materials grows, 10% of EPP is BHP Billiton.
Cons: I’ve been cautious with the accumulation, as over 46% of this ETF is in Financials. Sure, as a %, most of the Financials are ANZ banks, but I have such a limited trust of this sector – I can easily imagine some panic-inducing event turning this into a loser faster than the HFT machines can dump it.
TA: The price data is strong above the cloud:
EPP appears to be at a confluence of support. I'm holding at this point, and will add another chunk if it can manage to hold the blue line. If it breaks the overhead green, I’m adding more for what I believe should be another nice leg up:
