Perishabull

The last few years of TLT (weekly)

 

(log)

 

Recently it's bounced off the lower channel, will it hold? I don't think so.

A break of that downtrend may well Accelerate the slide in bonds / rise in yields

The break

Yesterday's move predictably retraced.

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

Gold is now moving up nicely, off the important 480d-MA that I have identified:

 

http://www.greenener...showtopic=17354

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

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...

The last few years of TLT (weekly)

(log)

Recently it's bounced off the lower channel, will it hold? I don't think so.

The question is has Gold consolidate enough. I think so. This is GLD;

(log)

SLV has just completed a nice ABCD move. I'm increasing my position on gold at the moment, and would look for silver to move higher also from this point.

(log)

Gold starting to look lively here...

Nice chart.... bet it looks even better on the log though.

Nice chart.... bet it looks even better on the log though.

Here you go, right on cue, I've added a couple of lines to give an idea of possible trendlines;

According to this it could even go down to as low as $1400 and still be in an uptrend, any lower though and that view would be thrown into severe doubt. Strangely I've not been concerned about this downmove and that is worrying in itself, sentiment according to sentimentrader is at 50%, really not very low at all....uh oh.

 

 

Nice chart.... bet it looks even better on the log though.

Lol, how did I know you would say that. I'll put that up tomorrow.

GLD

This is over the last few years, doesn't look quite so bad, I would get concerned if it went below $1500...

No santa rally for gold!

Looks like a 5th of 5th blowoff is completeing

 

 

 

Ask yourself, why have London prices reached these insane multiples. and what can you do to take advantage of the yawning gap?

What's the closest thing to executing a short against Candy and Candy?

I think Odey wants a 0% interest rate since it would create a huge boom, making it very easy for his hedge fund to make profits.

"Man's first purpose... was to Mine Gold"

 

That's what Zecheria Sitchin believed.

After translating Sumerian scrolls, he developed the theory that humans were genetically engineered by "the Annunaki"

to mine gold

 

A strange theory, but many believe it

That's one of the interesting things about people, some of them will believe unbelievable things.

"Austrian driver allowed 'pastafarian' headgear photo

An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear".

Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.

Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.

Later a police spokesman explained that the licence was issued because Mr Alm's face was fully visible in the photo.

"The photo was not approved on religious grounds. The only criterion for photos in driving licence applications is that the whole face must be visible," said Manfred Reinthaler, a police spokesman in Vienna.

He was speaking on Wednesday, after Austrian media had first reported Mr Alm's reason for wearing the pasta strainer.

After receiving his application the Austrian authorities had required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.

According to Mr Reinthaler, "the licence has been ready since October 2009 - it was not collected, that's all there is to it".

The idea came into Mr Alm's noodle three years ago as a way of making a serious, if ironic, point.

A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light-hearted, US-based faith whose members call themselves pastafarians.

A medical interview established the self-styled "pastafarian" was mentally fit to drive

The group's website states that "the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma".

In response to pressure for American schools to teach the theory known as intelligent design, which some Christians favour as an alternative to natural selection, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster wrote to the Kansas School Board asking for the pastafarian version of intelligent design to be taught to schoolchildren.

Straining credulity

In the same spirit, Mr Alm's pastafarian-style application for a driving licence was a response to the Austrian recognition of confessional headgear in official photographs.

The licence took three years to come through and, according to Mr Alm, he was asked to submit to a medical interview to check on his mental fitness to drive but - straining credulity - his efforts have finally paid off.

It is the police who issue driving licences in Austria, and they have duly issued a laminated card showing Mr Alm in his unorthodox item of religious headgear.

When asked for his reaction to Mr Reinthaler's comments, Mr Alm told the broadcaster ORF: "I didn't know I was guilty of not collecting it. That doesn't alter the fact that it still took nearly a year [to be issued]".

The next step, Mr Alm told the Austrian news agency APA, is to apply to the Austrian authorities for pastafarianism to become an officially recognised faith."

Courtesy of BBC

From South China Morning Post;

"A buyer has paid HK$68,083 per square foot for a luxury flat at Opus Hong Kong, the new Frank Gehry-designed residential building in Mid-Levels East, a record for an apartment in Hong Kong and Asia in terms of price per square foot.

Data from the Lands Registry show the flat, on the 9th floor of the building at 53 Stubbs Road, was sold for HK$455 million on October 17, nine days before the government announced measures to curb property speculation. There is no information on the buyer.

The 6,683 sq ft flat offers a view of the city and Victoria Harbour.

The price beat the previous record, set by a duplex flat at 39 Conduit Road in Mid-Levels West, which sold for HK$360.7 million, or HK$63,999 per sq ft in April last year.

Ricky Poon, executive director of Colliers International's residential sales department, believes the buyer was willing to pay a record-breaking price because there is a lack of flats bigger than 6,000 sq ft and it is the latest luxury development in the city.

The price is almost 6 per cent higher than that paid for a flat on the 8th floor at Opus Hong Kong, which sold for HK$430 million or HK$63,657 per sq ft in August.

The 12-storey Opus Hong Kong, developed by Swire Properties, provides 10 flats and two double-level garden apartments with private swimming pools. The flats are 6,000 to 6,900 sq ft. Gehry's previous designs include the Guggenheim Museum in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Despite the luxury residential market taking a hit from the government's new measures since the record-breaking deal was signed, Poon said he did not expect the buyer to cancel. "I don't think Swire would cut their asking prices for the remaining flats. They would rather keep the flats for leasing. And luxury residential prices have dropped a few per cent only and the buyer did not need to pay the new buyer's stamp duty and new rate of special stamp duty," he said."

interesting mix!

 

Bet you can appreciate the "properties" of polished silver !

And I'm sure it's Gallivant who does the polishing!

Welcome Gallivant, looking forward to your posts here.