Author: Colin Twiggs

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Crude oil and commodities correction

Brent Crude is headed for a test of medium-term support at $115/barrel. Respect would confirm the strong primary up-trend; strengthened if 63-day Twiggs Momentum forms a trough above the zero line. Breakout above $126 would offer a target of $150/barrel*.

ICE Brent Afternoon Markers

* Target calculation: 125 + ( 125 – 100 ) = 150

The broader CRB Commodities Index broke its long-term rising trendline and is headed for a test of primary support at 295 . Failure would signal a decline to 265*. The 63-day Twiggs Momentum peak below the zero line already indicates continuation of the primary down-trend.

CRB Commodities Index

* Target calculation: 295 – ( 325 – 295 ) = 265

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Gold, Silver and the Dollar

The Dollar Index met strong resistance at 80.00 and is likely to re-test support at 78.00. Upward breakout would signal continuation of the primary up-trend, while failure of support would warn of reversal to a down-trend. In the longer term, breakout above 82.00 would offer a target of 86.00*. Respect of the zero line by 63-day Twiggs Momentum would reinforce the primary up-trend, while breach would indicate a primary down-trend.

US Dollar Index

* Target calculation: 82 + ( 82 – 78 ) = 86

Gold continues to test the long-term trendline at $1600/ounce. 63-Day Twiggs Momentum oscillating around the zero line highlights uncertainty. Failure of support at $1600 would warn that the decade-long up-trend is weakening, while breach of primary support at $1500 would confirm. Recovery above $1700, however, would indicate another test of $1800, suggesting the start of a new up-trend. Breakout above $1800 would confirm, offering a target of $2000/ounce*.

Spot Gold

* Target calculation: 1800 + ( 1800 – 1600 ) = 2000; 1500 – (1800 – 1500 ) = 1200

The Gold Bugs Index, representing un-hedged gold stocks, is already in a primary down-trend, suggesting that spot prices are likely to follow. Peaks below zero on 63-day Twiggs Momentum also indicate a strong down-trend.

Gold Bugs Index

Spot silver is also in a primary down-trend, having encountered strong resistance at $36/ounce. A medium-term descending triangle warns of further weakness. Failure of primary support at $26 would indicate a decline to $20*.

Silver

* Target calculation: 27.50 – (35 – 27.50 ) = 20

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End of the Age of Entitlement | Joe Hockey

THE END OF THE AGE OF ENTITLEMENT

JOE HOCKEY’S SPEECH TO THE INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, LONDON

…Let me put it to you this way: The Age of Entitlement is over.

We should not take this as cause for despair. It is our market based economies which have forced this change on unwilling participants.

What we have seen is that the market is mandating policy changes that common sense and years of lectures from small government advocates have failed to achieve.

via The Age of Entitlement | Institute of Economic Affairs.

Hat tip to Houses and Holes

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Trading Volatility, How to Beat the Stock Market at its Own Game :: The Market Oracle

A 2011 study from DALBAR, a Boston-based research firm, shows that investors achieved a mere 41.9% of the S&P 500’s performance over the 20 years ended December 31, 2010.

In other words, investors left 58.1% on the table.

The DALBAR study also shows that the average investor achieved only 3.8% a year versus the 9.1% annualized returns of the S&P 500 because they tended to jump in and out of the markets at the worst possible moments.

Adding insult to financial injury, Berkeley Finance Professor Terrance Odean’s analysis of more than 10,000 retail brokerage accounts shows that the stocks investors sell tend to outperform the ones they buy.

In fact, Odean found that winning stocks went on to gain an average of 3.4 percentage points more in the year after they were sold than the losers to which investors clung.

via Trading Volatility, How to Beat the Stock Market at its Own Game :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website.

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Sowing Seeds of the Next Major Crisis – WSJ News Hub

Francesco Guerrera: “Prolonged intervention by the authorities is creating fundamental distortions in the financial markets. They are in my view going to create the next crisis.”

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John Mauldin: Hoisington Q1 Review and Outlook

John Mauldin: Lacy Hunt kicks things off with a bang in Hoisington’s Quarterly Review and Outlook, this week’s Outside the Box:

“The standard of living of the average American continues to fall.”

The reason, in a word: debt. Lacy explains what happens:
“Efforts by fiscal and monetary authorities to sustain growth by further debt accumulation may produce some short-term benefit. Sadly, these interludes fade quickly as the debt becomes more destabilizing. The net result of increased indebtedness then becomes the opposite of what policymakers intend when they promote economic growth by either borrowing funds for increased government expenditures or encourage consumers to borrow with artificial and temporary incentives.”

In other words, you can’t get to real, sustained growth of an economy by growing debt after a certain point — one that, sadly, we have already reached.

John Mauldin: Hoisington Q1 Review and Outlook.

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Dems Lay Trap for GOP with Buffett Rule

Do Top Earners Pay Too Little?

Taxpayers earning more than $1 million a year pay an average U.S. income tax rate of nearly 19 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center. The top individual tax rate is 35 percent. Loopholes and other deductions help lower that rate so that most Americans pay a much lower effective rate. A middle-income earner making between $50,000 and $75,000 pays an average 5.7 percent effective rate, while a low-income worker making between $10,000 and $20,000 pays no income tax. Effective rates vary wildly within income groups, however, with some people paying far less than average and some far more.

Critics say this underscores the need for a minimum tax….

via Dems Lay Trap for GOP with Buffett Rule.

Comment:~ I would say this underscores the need to scrap the income tax model which ends up with “some people paying far less than average and some far more” and to impose a flat value-added tax (consumption tax) of around 15%. Impact on the poor could be reduced through subsidies — not tax exemptions which are an administrative nightmare — of basic foodstuffs and other necessities.

Interesting that the proposed “Buffett Tax” would only raise $47 billion if imposed on taxpayers earning more than $1 million. Less than 4 percent of the annual $1.2 trillion federal budget deficit that it is supposed to solve.

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Europe’s Economic Suicide – NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman: If European leaders really wanted to save the euro they would be looking for an alternative course. And the shape of such an alternative is actually fairly clear. The Continent needs more expansionary monetary policies, in the form of a willingness — an announced willingness — on the part of the European Central Bank to accept somewhat higher inflation; it needs more expansionary fiscal policies, in the form of budgets in Germany that offset austerity in Spain and other troubled nations around the Continent’s periphery, rather than reinforcing it. Even with such policies, the peripheral nations would face years of hard times. But at least there would be some hope of recovery.

What we’re actually seeing, however, is complete inflexibility. In March, European leaders signed a fiscal pact that in effect locks in fiscal austerity as the response to any and all problems. Meanwhile, key officials at the central bank are making a point of emphasizing the bank’s willingness to raise rates at the slightest hint of higher inflation.

via Europe’s Economic Suicide – NYTimes.com.

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EconoMonitor : Last Days of Rome » How America Builds Its Way Back to Balance

Michael Moran: While China excels at building and even incrementally improving established product lines like GM’s Buicks and countless other Western and Japanese goods manufactured there, it has struggled to innovate. Even in 2010, the year China officially overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy, no Chinese brand could viably be called a household name in any Asian market, let alone in the wider world. The annual global branding study by the market research firm TNS found in 2010 that, while consumer brands from Denmark, Finland, South Korea, and Switzerland make the top 20, no Chinese product or brand appeared in the top 1,000.

……China can claw its way up the value-added food chain and move its companies beyond the goal of building a better, cheaper Buick and into the high-end, high-margin markets for software, aerospace, robotics, and sophisticated engineering currently dominated by the United States, Europe, and Japan. But the progress to date has been almost impossible to measure, and the country’s substandard educational system, demographic and political challenges, and corruption suggest that this will be more of a Long March than a Great Leap Forward.

via EconoMonitor : Last Days of Rome » How America Builds Its Way Back to Balance.

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Japan & South Korea: strong buying pressure

Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index reflects strong buying support, with a long tail on last week’s candle. Recovery above 10000 would signal an advance to 11000*, the gap between the low (9400) and medium-term support at 9000 indicating strong buying pressure. 63-Day Twiggs Momentum confirms a strong primary up-trend.

Nikkei 225 Index

* Target calculation: 10 + ( 10 – 9 ) = 11

Dow Jones South Korea Index is holding above medium-term support at 425. Follow-through above 445 would confirm the advance to 480*. 13-Week Twiggs Money Flow respecting zero (from above) indicates a strong primary up-trend.

Dow Jones South Korea Index

* Target calculation: 420 + ( 420 – 360 ) = 480

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