Free Republic

Last week I was told that we were going to see more gold weakness in the days ahead because big money had to sell their positions. Folks, smart big-money traders don’t sell into weakness. These kinds of investors don’t think like the typical retail investor who's forever trying to avoid drawdowns. Big-money investors take positions based on fundamentals and then continually buy dips until the fundamentals reverse. The fundamentals haven’t reversed for gold so I’m confident in saying that smart money isn’t selling its gold, it's using this dip to accumulate. With that being said, there are times when big...

Think Dow 11,000 is a big deal? Think again. The Dow Jones industrial average briefly hit the milestone Friday for the first time in 18 months before closing at 10,997. But Wall Street analysts who study key stock index levels say all the attention paid to 11,000 is more like a big distraction. They worry that investors are ignoring another number at their peril: The surprisingly low volume of trading. As stocks have risen over the past year, the volume reflects the vulnerability of a rally riding on the shoulders of relatively few participants. And that's given pause even to...

Rumors Of Greek Bailout Produce Monster Victory For The Bulls Vince Veneziani Feb. 9, 2010, 4:03 PM All it took was a rumor about Greece to bail this market out. The Dow closed up 136 points to end at 10,045. The NASDAQ closed at 2147, up 22 points, and the S&P 500 gained 12 points to close at 1068. Energy led the rally today, followed closely by the insurance and consumer goods industry. Oil rallied $2 to close at $73.87 a barrel. Gold rose to $1077.70, up $11.50 an ounce. Silver gained $0.38 to finish at $15.46.

US workers, their retirement funds already clobbered by a decade-long flat-lining of the major stock market indexes, are facing the growing odds of another Lost Decade -- which would further tarnish their dreams of prosperous retirement. A number of financial pros are predicting just such a nightmare -- that the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 Index, into which many workers have invested their 401(k) cash, will march sideways for as many as another 10 years. "The country will grow at a slower rate over the next 10 years as Americans begin the long process of de-leveraging," said...

The contrasts are too stark to ignore. Stocks are supercharging ahead, while home prices are stalled and likely to dip further. Emerging markets are eating the developed world's lunch. Asset prices in general are rising far above the economic reality that would rationally support them. Main Street Americans are struggling to pay their bills, while Wall Street executives are getting record bonuses. Two Americas; trust me it's more than just a campaign slogan. It's the cold hard reality. The dichotomy continues. Stocks, gold and oil all continue their amazing climb as the dollar descends to new lows. A smart move...

Call me ratsy: a survivor with resilience, adaptability and durability. Like Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit from Guys and Dolls, I crave action. The Big Board is my basement hangout, and I'm ready to bet on anything--well almost anything. Every day is an adventure. I can't wait for the animals to pop out of their cages at 9:30 a.m. Who knows what 10 o'clock macro statistic roils the market? Last week it was flattish retail sales and sticky unemployment stats, but I'm not too concerned. There's loneliness on the sales floor at big boxes like Lowe's ( LOW - news...

When I was about 9 years old, my father took my elder sister and I to see a performance by a famous magician called Blackstone. What I remember most about the show is when Blackstone, with a flourish of his cape, made an elephant appear onstage out of thin air. It was an astonishing feat, and the crowd - including me - went wild with applause. I had no idea how he did it. After the show however, as we were exiting the theater, my elder sister said, “I didn’t see what was so great about that elephant. It just...

Economy: A White House spokesman says in many respects the current expansion is healthier than the one under President Clinton. Of course, he's immediately ridiculed. But that doesn't make his claim less true. Given the media's failure to cover the ongoing Bush boom, it's no surprise that some would treat such an idea with disdain and outright disbelief. President Bush's economy better than Clinton's? Preposterous!

BEIJING, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Fifty-three mutual funds in China reported operating profits of 49.96 billion yuan (6.46 billion U.S. dollars) in 2006, thanks to the country's bull markets. Their net incomes totaled 22.28 billion yuan, while paper profits reached 27.69 billion yuan, according to the annual reports of 53 mutual funds that launched by ten fund management firms. The record operating profits were seven times greater than the seven billion yuan earned in 2005 by all 206 mutual funds under 46 fund management companies in China. The country experienced a fund investment frenzy last year as investors transferred their...

Levels of greed and hunger for risk in world markets have soared off the scale, according to stark research which warns of an impending slump. The alert tempered news that the FTSE 100 index of leading UK shares has hit a new six-year high, while the FTSE 250 has soared to a fresh peak. Dresdner Kleinwort said its fear and greed index - a measure of the global market's appetite for risk - had just hit an all-time high.... The research is the latest evidence that markets may have become over-complacent about the possibility that their assets are overvalued or...

Commodities expert Jim Rogers says that, while he can't pinpoint the exact timeframe, oil will reach $100 a barrel after a "correction." Readers will remember that Rogers predicted the start of the commodities rally in 1999. "I'm just not smart enough to know how far down it will go and how long it will stay, but I do know that within the context of the bull market, oil will go over $100," Rogers said in a Tokyo interview. "It will go over $150. Whether that is in 2009 or 2013, I don't have a clue, but I know it's going...

There are lots of bearish sentiment around. There are no lacks of bulls either. The stock market all around the world on the basis of constant dollar did pick in late eighties led by that of Japan. It is a mega bull cycle that started with the Roman Empire. Since then world never really saw a long term bull market. The market may have finally started topping out in that 2500 year cycle. But such mega cycles take an enormous time to top out. For a cycle that started 2500 years back, it is prudent to assume that it will...

Stocks closed sharply higher Tuesday with the S&P 500 regaining the 1200 level while an upgrade of Intel helped lift the Dow to a new 2004 high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 100 points, or 0.9%, to 10,762, passing its previous 2004 closing high of 10,737 touched in February and the best close since June 2001. The S&P 500 climbed 11 points, or 0.9%, to 1205 -- just shy of its recent 40-month high -- while the Nasdaq added 23 points, or 1.1%, to 2150. The 10-year Treasury note was recently up 2/32 to yield 4.17%, while the dollar...

Blue chips soar to 31/2 year highs Intel upgraded; Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley top view By Susan Lerner, CBS.MarketWatch.com ENEW YORK (CBS.MW) - Blue chips climbed to their best levels since June 2001 Tuesday afternoon as investors stepped up to buy stocks in the hopes of capitalizing on a year-end rally. CBS MARKETWATCH TOP NEWS U.S. stocks climb; blue chips at 3 1/2 year high Pfizer shares enjoy bounce following naproxen warning IAC Interactive surges on Expedia spin-off plan Morgan Stanley fourth-quarter net income up 18% Chain-store sales pick up in last days before Christmas Leading the charge was Intel...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rallied on Tuesday, with the Dow touching its highest intraday level for 3 1/2 years, helped by a rebound in beaten-down drugmaker Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , while tech stocks got a boost from a broker upgrade of Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) . The Dow Jones industrial average was up 96.87 points, or 0.91 percent, at 10,758.47, after climbing to 10,765.27, the highest the Dow has been since June 14, 2001. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 10.69 points, or 0.89 percent, at 1,205.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index...

Is it Bush vs. Dean? Posted: October 20, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. With an uptick in his approval rating to 56 percent – higher than Reagan at this point in his presidency – George W. Bush seems to have weathered his summer squall and to be well-positioned to do what his father failed to do: Win a second term. The resurgence in the president's ratings appears due to two factors: the California recall election that riveted the nation – and in which the face of the Democratic Party was that of Gray Davis, and of...

As the chairman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, and subsequently as the chief economist of the World Bank during the East Asian financial crisis, Joseph Sitglitz was deeply involved in many of the economic-policy debates of the past ten years. What did this experience tell him? That much of what we think we know about the prosperity of the 1990s is wrong. Here is a revised history of the decade, by the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in EconomicsFull Article

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Wall Street says the worst of the stock market is behind us. The brokers' highly paid strategists, sweating bullets, are urging America to buy early and often. History will demonstrate the stock market's cheerleaders are premature. Just look at the three great bull markets of modern history. The biggest one we know all about: it ended two years ago, and its aftermath has bankrupted thousands of companies and erased $7 trillion or more of American wealth. The other two great bull markets? One was during America's roaring 1920s, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more...