Meanwhile, silver showed surprising strength this week. The chart below shows a very bullish weekly candlestick for the metal. Silver appears capable of making another assault upon the recent market peak:

   The XAU has found continued strength at the 50 period moving average in the daily chart. In the weekly chart below, gold stocks posted another slightly bullish candlestick:

   All three of the major indices have been consolidating for about 3 months. However, the Dow Jones managed to record an impressive break-out above the consolidation level two weeks ago and remained above 11,000 this week. The S&P and Nasdaq stayed range bound.  Ideally the Nasdaq and S&P will confirm the Dow Jones break-out next week. If not, the Dow break-out may turn out to be false.

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*Interviews w/ Steve Forbes & Dr. Van Tharp*

    On the Saturday February 25th program at radio.goldseek.com, Steve Forbes shared his views on the domstic economy as well as general investing. Mr. Forbes is the CEO of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. We'll also chatted with Dr. Van K. Tharp. Dr. Tharp is an excellent author and trading coach, arguably the top in his field. Our first few callers will receive an autographed copy of his book or one of his trading simulations, free of charge. You won't want to miss these two interviews on the Saturday, February 25th show, here are a few highlights:

  *Steve thinks that the American economy is performing much better than most people are giving it credit. He agrees that domestically, we are seeing moderate inflation which is evident in gas prices and commodities.

   Mr. Forbes believes that the new chairman of the board Ben Bernanke does not want to be viewed as pro inflation so he will keep raising interest rates and eventually the Fed will sell bonds in order to soak up the excess money in circulation and halt inflation.

   He does not think that Goldman Sachs was justified in its one hundred dollar per barrel projection for crude oil in the years ahead.  He notes that shale in Colorado and the Tarsands in Canada will become viable sources for oil at these high levels which will in turn, eventually flood the supply of oil and ultimately cap its price.     Furthermore, he says that the fundamentals are not in place for long term crude oil price appreciation, unless the US went to war with Iran or if Ben Bernanke increased the money supply as the Federal Reserve did in the seventies.

    Mr. Forbes prefers a disciplined approach to investing in the stock market and points out that timing the market is very difficult. He says that people lose most money due to being whipsawed by their emotions and that even if you know when to sell your stocks, you might miss the opportune time to buy them back.

   Steve is a fan of alternative energy sources. He says that Nuclear has a very bad reputation but it is unjustified. He thinks that people  should remember that nuclear plants have had no deaths in this country. To find out if Steve thinks you should own gold, listen to the show at: www.radio.goldseek.com

   Next on our show is Dr. Van K. Tharp. I highly recommend Dr. Tharp's works, such as: Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom. The text is my favorite trading book on the market. Dr. Tharp likes to define trend following as watching for a stock that is moving up in as straight a line as possible - like a trend line seen in technical analysis or a diagonal line.

   He points out that only a handful of Warren Buffets investments made him the second wealthiest man in the world and that the rest were uneventful. He says that we should also focus on making our big winners last as long as possible and cut the losers as quickly as possible.

   Like many of our guests, he does not like to forecast prices. He thinks you need to develop a big picture idea of the markets. He says that were in a long term secular market for commodities.  To hear what Dr. Tharp thinks about investing in gold and silver and where he is putting his money, click here:

www.radio.goldseek.com

You won't want to miss our radio show next week with Julian Phillips of the Gold Forecaster - Global Watch!

   _____________________________________

Guru Predictions

*The Golden Guru Award*

   There were far fewer Gold Guru's willing to share their forecasts for precious metal this week, however, two did stand out:

          Paul van Eeden noted: “…my belief is that the gold price is going higher and so I am not concerned. If I think that we will see $1000 an ounce in the next few years it really does not matter to me what the gold price is next week, or next month.”

          Also, Commonwealth Bank issued a forecast indicating that gold could reach as high as $675 over the next two years.

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Bottom Line

   The Gold Guru Award of The Week Award, goes to Paul van Eeden for his bold $1,000 gold target.  When we take the average of our intermediate-term pundit estimates for gold we find a single price target of, $838 an increase of $96 from last weeks consensus of $742.

 ($1,000 + $675) / 2  =  $838

    We'll be watching to see if silver leads gold and precious metals stocks higher next week and if silver can eclipse its previous high point.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Waltzek

cwaltzek@comcast.net

Please visit my blog and web site for free daily market articles, audio broadcasts and analysis.

Click Here. http://silverinvestor.blogspot.com/

-- Posted Sunday, 26 February 2006 | Digg This Article