Today, Europe is a headline I want to cover.  All you have to do is look at the charts these past few months.  Even prior to expiration, you saw a different market in the morning and a different market in the afternoon.  I was speaking to people in Iowa about this.  These people spoke in [...]

Once again, gold is the big story. We’re seeing a fairly dramatic end-of-year liquidation, and it’s retraced so much that we’re almost entering bear market territory. I’m calling this the beginning of a bear trap: the trend followers are no longer getting long and are starting to get short—which in my mind is a buying [...]

Folks, I’ve been saying for weeks now that the market has been mispriced, and as more and more earnings reports surface, we’re seeing the proof in the pudding. Look at Ford. Boeing. These are hot numbers coming out at a time when a lot of people were concerned we were going to see a slowdown. [...]

Folks, there are three distinct factors that are driving these markets right now: earnings, Europe and China. Let’s break it down, shall we? Earnings. I’ve talked a lot about the lowering of expectations for corporate earnings and how they might have gotten too low over the course of the last couple of months. I also [...]

Folks, pardon the pun, but gold is melting again. And when I say gold, I mean the front-month futures contract, not ETFs—real gold, not a worthless piece of paper. If you’re still trading commodities ETFs, I implore you to get rid of the garbage and look into the inherent advantages of the futures market. Elliott [...]

Folks, what’s going on with gold is just phenomenal. I said yesterday that I was anticipating a correction in the 150 ballpark, down to near that 1750 range, but the way it’s moving now it could go down into the 1600s before it’s done. Take time to analyze this break, because this is the kind [...]

Folks, just as markets making their bottoms can be sloppy, so, too, can markets making their tops. I certainly don’t think that we saw a top for gold, but, as I mentioned before, I did feel that the price was getting a little frothy in that 1850-1900 range. As expected, we’re seeing a corrective selloff. [...]

Folks, the bottoming-out process is messy. It’s ugly. And it can be very painful. For Exhibit A, take a look at what we’re going through right now. But if you’re a long-term investor with strong nerves who can be cerebral in times where emotion has clearly taken over, these are the times that can end [...]

Folks, I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve learned that there are traders’ markets and there are investors’ markets. As the nervous condition continues and the aftershocks from Monday’s pullback are compounded by problems at European banks, this market environment has become unsuitable for traders—you simply cannot properly manage risk when there’s this kind [...]

Well, folks, what do you say after a day like yesterday?  Watching the market drama in the wake of S&P’s downgrade of U.S. debt, I was reminded of something an old floor trader, Sam Shanker, said to me back when I was just a young punk at the CME. “When there’s blood in the streets,” [...]