Perishabull

Three drives pattern on Silver - is this the low? Silver futures

Must be... "Bernanke: QE benefits clear, risks manageable WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sent a strong signal Tuesday that he backed the continuation of the central bank’s $85 billion bond-buying program. “In the current economic environment, the benefits of asset purchases […] are clear,” Bernanke said in remarks to the Senate Banking Committee. See MarketWatch’s live blog on Bernanke’s testimony to the Senate Banking Committee. “The bottom line is that it is QE3 until the job markets improve substantially,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets." Oh my god, we could be waiting some time.

Signs of life from the barbaric relic;

Sinclair responded to Pritchard - see thread regarding Sinclair's Jsmineset

One of the few people worth listening to is Andrew Maguire, who was interviewed on www.kingworldnews.com at the weekend; Link to interview page on King World News http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2013/2/24_Andrew_Maguire.html MP3 : http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2013/2/24_Andrew_Maguire_files/Andrew%20Maguire%202%3A24%3A2013.mp3

$23

http://metro.co.uk/2013/02/20/liverpool-homes-for-sale-for-just-1-after-failed-regeneration-project-3505106/ "Liverpool homes for sale for just £1 after failed regeneration project Residents in Liverpool could bag a bargain home in the city after officials announced plans to sell off derelict houses in a failed regeneration zone for just £1. City bosses hope the move will revive a stalled project after months of delays caused by the council’s decision to break off talks with developer Leader1. The firm had been in line to redevelop hundreds of homes in the ‘Granby Triangle’ but city leaders pulled the £25million tender after the company failed to meet deadlines for signing the contract. Deputy mayor and council finance chief Cllr Paul Brant said: ‘This allows people who may be excluded from mortgages but have construction skills to play a part in the regeneration of their communities. ‘It’s been proven to work in other parts of the region. ‘We’ve seen that the private sector model has not succeeded so far and, through this way of doing things, if there is any profit it will stay with local people.’ Since it was revealed the deal had fallen through in November last year the boarded up homes have remained empty. Now, the council proposes to sell off a cluster of houses for just £1 to residents – on the condition they will be brought up to a decent standard. Private landlords will also be able to bid for the tender to refurbish some of the vacant homes and then buy the freeholds for £1."

Well, the other week where sentiment was this low was 2005, and clearly the bull market continued. Chart from www.sentimentrader.com;

Sentiment on gold has dropped markedly with its latest push lower. Sentiment is under 42% for only the 2nd week in more than a decade. (Although prior to 2001 sentiment would often go down as low as 20%) Info from sentimentrader.

What signs are you looking for?

I must have missed that!

That's fine, but what about the rest of us who aren't immortal?

Every $50 lower is an even BETTER buying opportunity lol. It'll not be long before the "It's the end of the gold bull market" crowd come out and say hi to the "Prechter is right after all!" crowd.

Gold sentiment very low according to www.sentimentrader.com;

I don' know about others but I don't often visit Kitco anymore, I think interest in that has probably waned due to lack of credibility of Jon Nadler. On the other hand Jim Sinclair's JSmineset might be of interest in terms of sentiment; Here's traffic to JSmineset with the price of gold alongside (GLD); and combined; Note that I have taken care to exactly align the date scales of each chart.

An update on Gold sentiment according to www.sentimentrader.com

The break

I love how you throw in the predictably - did you short it?

The 480 looks very solid on the chart.

Gold futures jumped up 1% to $1680 following the annualised US GDP number coming in at -0.1% against consensus of 1.1%; Let's see if there's follow through when the markets open in the next few minutes.

6 days between posts on the Gold thread.... It's time for tumbleweed The tumbleweed indicator came out out on August 15th last year for Gold; Here's what happened; (For those that don't get it - I post tumbleweed during large gaps in posts. Large gaps = Lack of interest AND/OR very poor sentiment)

Felix Zulauf reckons we're at the end of Gold's consolidation phase... Excerpt from Marketwatch; "Gold will be ‘up and running’ soon says Felix Zulauf Contributors to Barron’s recent Roundtable 2013 had high expectations for gold despite its somewhat lackluster performance last year, with Felix Zulauf, president of Zulauf Asset Management AG in Switzerland recommending gold again and talking about its prospects for record prices above $2,000 an ounce. “Gold is at the very end of a cyclical correction and the gold price will be up and running again soon,” said Zulauf. “Once gold surpasses $1,800 an ounce, it will run to the low- to mid-$2,000s.” On Tuesday, gold for February delivery GCG3 traded at a high above $1,695 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices finished last year with a 7% gain, its smallest yearly increase since 2008. Gold has been “great for 12 years, but it doesn’t always go up,” said Fred Hickey, editor of The High-Tech Strategist in Nashua, N.H., pointing out that in the latest 12-year period, there have been five corrections in the gold price."

Here's John Thomas (aka MadHedgeFundTrader) on his iLeaf...; "The Final Word on the Electric Nissan Leaf After driving my all-electric Nissan Leaf four-door hatchback for two years, my final conclusion is that it is absolutely the perfect second car for most American families. Some 90% of all US driving is less than 40 miles a day, and this car is targeted at that market. If a spouse has a reliable daily round trip commute of less than the car’s 80-mile range, this is your car. The ideal combination is to own a Leaf and a hybrid SUV for those long distance ski weekends, visits to out-of-state relatives, and road trips in general. The real revelation comes when you realize that this is a car that creates its own fuel. When I depart the Berkeley Hills and reach the entrance to the Oakland Bay Bridge ten miles away, I have more power than when I started. That’s because the trip is entirely downhill. Wow! There are other benefits beyond flipping your local Exxon station the bird when you cruise by. I often find handwritten notes stuck under my windshield wipers from young women asking for rides. When you are 61, such offers come increasingly few and far between. That alone is worth the cost of purchase. Now, I only use gas station for their toilets and air pumps, which somehow seems appropriate. You can get all of this for $38,000, of which $7,500 can be applied as a federal tax credit. Or you can go to your local Nissan dealer, where you can pick up a used model in new condition with 16,000 miles on the clock for $20,000. Given that you are no longer spending $4,000 a year on gas and tune ups, you easily amortize the entire cost of a new car in in ten years. Expect to get a lot of thumbs up from bystanders as you silently drive by. This is not a souped up golf cart by any means. After comfortably sliding my 6’4′ frame behind the wheel, I asked the salesman to pack the car with beefcake so I could give it a real test. Three farm boys from Tennessee, real heifers, dutifully piled in. It made no difference; the car took off like a Porsche. When I first got the car, I tore off down the freeway at 90 mph, gleefully weaving in and out of the lumbering, gas guzzling GM Suburban’s, Cadillac Escalades, and Ford Excursions that inhabit California state highway 24. Eventually I throttled off, lest I get California’s first zero emissions speeding ticket. The Leaf can be recharged from dead flat at home on a 240-volt plug in eight hours, or at your friend’s house in 16 hours at 110 volts. A GPS mapping system constantly displays your remaining range, as well as the locations of the nearest charging stations. If you run out of juice on the freeway, Nissan offers free roadside service with an immediate recharge. With a 600-pound lithium ion battery lining the bottom of the chassis, it has tremendous stability, and corners like it is on rails. The battery comes with an eight-year warranty and a ten-year life. One problem is that the car is utterly soundless. That is an issue driving in shopping mall parking lots, when clueless kids, especially those wearing ear buds, walk directly in front of a moving car. It is just a matter of time before the state mandates required cartones for electric cars in motion. When I took delivery of one of the first American Leaf’s, I was a pioneer. The entire San Francisco Bay area had only 25 public charging stations. More than a few times I ducked into sushi shops with a 100-foot extension cord in search of enough juice to get home. Once, I convinced the bemused parking attendants at the San Francisco Opera House to unplug their coffee machine to recharge my car. Even then, I coasted into my garage on my last couple of electrons, the car shouting warnings at me all the way. The pathfinder days are now long gone. Today, there are over 500 charging stations in this part of California. I have to say that it helped being a pilot and a scientist. Calculation of range and fuel consumed to destination come as second nature to me. If I didn’t, I would have found my place at the bottom of the Atlantic, the Pacific, or the Persian Gulf, ages ago. So I would think twice about buying one of these for a right-brained high school English teacher with no technical aptitude whatsoever. Figuring out the car’s actual performance was a mutual learning experience for both Nissan and me. There were quite a few calls to their engineers to discuss glitches and workarounds in the early days. Finally, Nissan sent a product development guy from Japan to discuss design of the second generation Leaf. By the way, their stock has been on fire for the past three months, up some 25%, as the weakening yen boosts their global competitiveness. My local utility has been cheering from the sidelines. PG&E is offering a special Plug-in-Vehicle rate of only 4.6 cent per kilowatt hour from 12:00 am to 7:00 am, compared to the standard top tier rate of 40 cents per hour, an 89% discount. That means the Leaf’s 80-mile trip cost me 92 cents. This is the same as buying all the gasoline I want at 23 cents per gallon! In other words, the fuel is basically free. When I asked the chief engineer about maintenance costs, I got a blank stare. Then he answered in a deadpan fashion, ‘there is no maintenance’. During the first 100,000 miles, the only expenses will be for brake pads and tires, as the 107 horsepower electric induction engine only has five moving parts operating at room temperature. Even the brake pads last forever, since the regenerative braking system does most of the stopping to generate more electric power. Instead of tune-ups, you get software upgrades. Only the tires need to be rotated every 8,000 miles. Alas, it is time for me to move on from my beloved Leaf. As with a first high school love, the excitement of the unfamiliar eventually wears off, and you start looking to trade up. I also could use more performance. In the electric, zero emissions car world, that means buying a brand Tesla S-1 performance model (TSLA), which I will pick up at the Fremont, California factory as soon as I finish writing this letter. I’ll let you know how she works out, once I have broken her in." Sounds great as long as there are charging stations or you don't need to go far...

Silver - 3 year The trend suggests that the bulls won't have to wait long before lift off...