news.goldseek.com >> 5 April 2012
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news.goldseek.com >> 5 April 2012 |
Stifel Nicolaus Cycles
By: David Chapman
What the chart shows is a commodity cycle that fits very well with other well known long term cycles. The cycle noted above is the Kondratiev Wave cycle of peaks and troughs in the stock markets that occur roughly every 50-60 years (although some now note that the cycle may now be extending to 70 years or as some have suggested the current Kondratiev winter is being extended through the actions of central banks – i.e. very low interest rates, quantitative easing (QE) etc.).
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 February 2012 |
A Default or not a Default?
By: David Chapman
Could Greece blow up the US banking system? Well it all depends on what one means by a Greek default as defined by ISDA. Who is ISDA? ISDA stands for the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. What is ISDA? ISDA is a trade organization of market participants for over-the-counter-derivatives. It is headquartered in New York City. In the derivatives business there is a standardized contract known as a “master agreement”. There are more than 800 members in 57 countries.
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news.goldseek.com >> 5 January 2012 |
Forecast 2012 – The “End Times”!
By: David Chapman
2012 could be a dangerous year. There are too many areas where things could go wrong. But if this forecast is correct, the first few months of the year could see a short squeeze that pushes the market higher. The short squeeze would be based on economic numbers that show no recession on the horizon, Europe holding together, and the Iran/US sabre rattling to stay just that – sabre rattling. But the cycles in the second half of the year bode poorly, and that is when some unforeseen event could sideswipe the market. However, one thing is for sure for 2012. That it is not the “End Times” as some suggests the Mayan calendar predicts.
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news.goldseek.com >> 19 December 2011 |
Gold in a Bear Market?
By: David Chapman
Whenever one gets a huge washout breakdown day, as was experienced in the gold market on December 14, the gold bears come out of the closet declaring that the gold bull is dead. Well-known columnist and analyst Dennis Gartman did so the day before, declaring that he was out of gold and that he is seeing "the beginnings of a real bear market, and the death of a bull." Mr. Gartman was not the only one, as others were also touting the end of the gold bull market and saying that the bubble had burst.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 December 2011 |
Kondratiev Is Alive And Well!
By: David Chapman
No matter how one looks at it, the current Kondratiev winter has several years to go. Things may well get worse before they get better. The stock market could fall to new lows. Gold could soar to new highs as the crisis deepens. The current solutions are band aids when what is required is a cleansing that allows the debt to be written off and deleveraged.
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news.goldseek.com >> 24 November 2011 |
US GDP - Shrinking!
By: David Chapman
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its headline US GDP number (2nd estimate) for the 3rd quarter on Tuesday. The number was revised down from 2.5% to 2%. The market had been expecting at least 2.3%. As Shadow Government Stats www.shadowstats.com points out this is little more than statistical noise. They noted that given a 95% confidence interval this number could have easily been negative as it was positive.
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news.goldseek.com >> 3 November 2011 |
The Sinking Euro
By: David Chapman
Not surprisingly the Euro is almost a mirror of the US$. The Euro makes up 57% of the US$ Index. Quite simply if the Euro goes up the US$ goes down and if the Euro goes down the US$ goes up. The Euro is the world’s second most traded currency. It is also a secondary reserve currency as while all central banks carry US$ as the world’s reserve currency most if not all carry the Euro as well. It is estimated that upwards of 27% of central bank reserves are held in Euros. Other reserve currencies include the Japanese Yen, the British Pound and the Swiss Franc. The Euro’s symbol is €.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 September 2011 |
The 9/11 Decade
By: David Chapman
When the airplanes struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 (aka 9/11) the stock market had already been falling for over 18 months. The high tech/internet bubble of the 1990s had topped first with the Dow Jones Industrials (DJI) on January 14, 2000 followed by the NASDAQ on March 10 and the S&P 500 on March 24. By the close of September 10, 2001 the DJI was down 18 per cent, the NASDAQ had fallen an incredible 66 per cent and the S&P 500 was off 28 per cent from the highs of 2000.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 September 2011 |
Gold in a Bubble?
By: David Chapman
It seems that every time gold makes an important high followed by a sudden collapse the comments that the gold bubble has burst dominates the commentaries. The problem with making that comment is that every time following what may be a sharp correction gold has moved on to new highs. Over the past decade no previous year’s low has been broken by any correction, usually a good sign that the market remains in a bull market. And until that occurs, while the bubble people may ultimately be right, gold can go a lot higher before the final peak is seen.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 August 2011 |
Chart of the Week
By: David Chapman
Monday, August 15, 2011 marked the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon dropping his bombshell on the world’s financial markets by announcing that he was ending the convertibility of the US dollar into gold. At the time gold was fixed to the dollar at a price of $35 per troy ounce. That now seems almost laughable as gold prices are currently above $1,800.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 April 2011 |
Trouble, Trouble Boil and Bubble!
By: David Chapman
A deadly cauldron of rising oil prices given the unrest in the world’s major oil producing region; an earthquake and tsunami that has turned into a deadly nuclear disaster, disrupting the world’s number two economy and others; the major Western countries awash in debt and the world’s reserve currency on a downward spiral. It all makes for a deadly brew of trouble that is boiling and bubbling. How it will play out is unknown. But given the current direction it is not pointing to a happy ending. No wonder gold and silver prices are soaring as a potential perfect storm of geopolitical and macroeconomic risk takes hold.
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news.goldseek.com >> 24 February 2011 |
The End of the US Dollar?
By: David Chapman
The turmoil across North Africa and the Middle East is threatening not only to overthrow aging dictatorships, autocracies and monarchies, but also to upset the geopolitical balance between the countries of that region and the Western powers that has existed since at least the 1950s. For the West, the issue has always been the security of oil. For the US there is a second issue, and that is the security of Israel. Now both are under threat.
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 December 2010 |
Forecast 2011 – A Year of Transition?
By: David Chapman
2010 was a tumultuous year. Around the world it seemed that quite often, chaos reigned. There were natural disasters: earthquakes rocked Haiti, Chile and China. The Haiti earthquake was the most devastating since the Sumatra, Indonesia earthquake and tsunami of 2004, with estimated deaths of over 250,000. A summer heat wave and drought in Russia caused wheat prices to soar. A volcanic eruption in Iceland, while not huge in the scale of volcanic eruptions, disrupted air travel across Europe. As the year ended, snow and ice storms across Europe, the north-eastern US and Atlantic Canada were also causing disruption.
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news.goldseek.com >> 7 October 2010 |
Of Mid-Term Elections and a Sinking US Dollar
By: David Chapman
History tells us that mid-term elections are normally bullish for the markets. But it may not be the case this time. The race to the bottom with competitive currency devaluations is destructive and could ultimately end badly for everyone.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 August 2010 |
The Chapman Report
By: David Chapman
Gold prices failed at trend line resistance seen near $1237. A break above this level would be positive and suggest that the highs near $1265 could fall. Support is seen at $1220, $1210 and $1200. Below $1200 a test of major support near $1170 becomes probable. Below $1170 and especially under $1150 a steeper decline to test even down to $1000 could occur.
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news.goldseek.com >> 14 May 2010 |
The Road to Destruction
By: David Chapman
For years numerous writers and advisers have been predicting that some form of great reckoning was coming. (The Great Reckoning was a book by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Moog.) The premise is that every credit-led expansion in recorded history has ended in a dramatic “credit crunch” and economic catastrophe.
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news.goldseek.com >> 25 March 2010 |
The Great Recovery
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
Around the time of the anniversary of the lows of March 2009 (March 9 saw the low close) there were a number of articles referring to the rally that got underway at the time as the “Great Recovery”. More often than not it was the “great recovery” following the “great recession” or “great crash”. (“The great recovery after the great crash” in the Toronto Star of March 9, 2010 was but one of the articles and blogs noted).
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 January 2010 |
A Recovery Year – But Now What?
By: David Chapman
Investors would be forgiven if, following the financial panic of 2008, they felt frozen and missed a lot of the recovery year that followed. But a strong recovery following a financial panic is not particularly unusual. When the monetary authorities go into panic mode, pump billions of dollars into the financial system and drop interest rates to virtually zero, it should come as no surprise that a stock market recovery follows.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 April 2009 |
Sucker Rally!
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
Sucker rallies (or bull traps) in a bear market are a time-honoured tradition. Bear markets see many rebounds, ranging from feeble rises of maybe 10 per cent over a period of a couple of weeks to ones that last years and recoup anywhere from 50 per cent to even over 100 per cent from the low. Call it from the little sucker to the really big sucker.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 March 2009 |
What a Mess!
By: David Chapman, Bullion Management Group
The markets and the economy are in a mess. The authorities are throwing everything they can at it to try and save the financial system. But their approach is misguided; fighting a debt collapse with more debt at taxpayer expense is a plan that will ultimately fail miserably. But the rebound rally could be an opportunity to not only regain back some of the losses gleamed over the past 17 months but to raise cash and restructure, ready for the next phase of the great bear market of the first decade of the new millennium.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 March 2009 |
Friday the 13th
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
Today is Friday the 13th: according to superstition, either a day of good luck or bad luck. It occurs at least once a year. The fear of Friday the 13th is a form of triskaidekaphobia, which is a phobia of the number 13. This year it has occurred in February and March and will occur again in November.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 February 2009 |
Is A Bigger Nightmare Beginning?
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
The rebound we had expected in the first quarter or so of 2009 is in trouble, or at least on hold. The Obama bounce has so far become the Obama bust. We suppose the signs were there earlier. November 5, 2008 – the day after the election – the S&P 500 dropped 5.3 per cent. January 20 (Obama inauguration day) it dropped another 5.3 per cent. It is an ominous start. Maybe the expectations were too high.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 February 2009 |
From Bad to Worse?
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
An eye catching quote for sure and you may already have seen it. Although as far as we can determine it is a hoax. It wasn’t actually written by Marx. But it is making the rounds on the internet and tries to make him out as some sort of seer. Given in particular the events of this past week with the bailout plans for the giant banks, it does somehow seem appropriate.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 February 2009 |
It’s A Bailout World!
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
If anyone had any doubt about the enormity of the financial crisis gripping the world, look no further than at the amazing conversion of Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper and his Finance Minister Jim Flaherty from small c, small government, fiscal conservatives to big spending, big government, deficit hawks. This is not a comment on the actual merits of the budget; merely a note that Harper and Flaherty have joined the bailout world, even if it seems to be with some reluctance.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 January 2009 |
It’s A Depression!
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
This past weekend, visiting our local Chapters book store, we were struck with the large display up front of books telling us about the new depression, how we got there and how to survive it, books about the Great Depression and a host of others.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 January 2009 |
Bonds in a Bubble?
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
We keep reading all these articles about how bonds are in a bubble and that any day now the bubble will burst. Naturally when you see something going straight up, the contrarian in each one of us wants to say “Hey, that’s not right”. Many felt that way in the late 1990s when the NASDAQ was in its bubble with price earnings ratios over 100 and even as high as 200. So out came the short sellers, convinced that they would make a bundle when the bubble burst.
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news.goldseek.com >> 5 January 2009 |
A Most Horrible Year - Could It Get Worse?
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
We suppose we could have premised this as “Annus Horibilis” but we weren’t sure whether the Queen would approve. We also couldn’t help but notice a John Mauldin missive that also used the same title “2008: Annus Horibilis, RIP” John Maudlin January 2, 2009. What can I say? We are all thinking the same thing.
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news.goldseek.com >> 17 December 2008 |
Gold Looking Up Again
By: David Chapman, Union Securities
While all asset classes except government debt instruments have suffered in 2008, gold and silver and the precious metals stocks as measured by the Gold Bugs Index (HUI) have clearly outperformed this decade. But not only that; their outperformance has been consistent during periods of financial stress and underperformance in the broader market. That includes both the periods of inflation (the 1970’s) and deflation (the Great Depression).