666 -- Gold and the Triumph of Numerology

last year I wrote a post predicting that the S&P 500 would hit 666 (or abouts). I was right about that, but I was wrong on something else. I also wrote that the price of Gold might be $666 at the same time the stock index was 666. that error keeps bugging me. how could I have been so far off? intellectual laziness, I suppose.

I confess though that I am still obsessed with the possibility of Gold hitting 666. and now I am doubly obsessed, because I got the notion in my head that the metal could hit the number pretty soon. as soon as May actually. as soon as May 12th or 13th to be exact.

why 666?

it's not because I believe in God, or his adversary. I don't. I take the number seriously because of the principles of proportion. Proportion is Everywhere. 3/4, 2/3, 5/8, 3/5, 1/2, 1/3, 3/8, 2/5, and so on and on. you Know, these fractions you learned in primary school. our mind orders the world according to these basic, irreducible fractions. 666 is just 1/3 of 1000. 1000 was about the recent high for the price of Gold. how evil!

also, in October 2006 Gold hit a low of 560.75 (PM Fix), and in March 2008 reached a high (so far) of 1011.25. a full Plastic retracement (0.75488) of that wave would be 671.18, not too far from 666.

or taking last month's high of 989 instead, a .75488 retracement would be 665.72. there are other numbers I could throw in here, but I'll spare you.

then there is the crowd psychology component. some poll has it that 70% of Americans believe in 'Satan'. and those that do not most likely still have an idea about the supposed 'number of the beast'.

or you could take a conspiratorial view of things and figure that those who pull the strings just like to fuck with people.

but why should Gold go down at all from here?

that's a good question, and one for which I confess not having a great reason.

but there is that five wave down pattern on last year's chart. sounds silly to base predictions on 'wave theory', but I can't help it. it's just too obvious to ignore. (or maybe it's so obvious that it really should be ignored?...)

plus, the near universal bullishness on Gold has me pretty suspicious. everyone is expecting Gold to go to like 2 or 3k. it will, to be sure, but not before all the believers' faiths are tested.

basically, I think Gold is in a 'flat'. if that is the case, then one more corrective wave would be in order to complete the formation. when this correction is over (whether at 800 or 750 or 666 -- matters little) then the market will be in a position to move to the next level. after this correction is over, the 'Gold Bubble' will begin.

why May 12th or 13th?

that's just a wild guess. I say that the market could drop to my price target as soon as those dates. if not then, it might be sometime in the Summer or early Fall.

but I'll leave you with a couple charts. I may or may not explain these in some future post.




(I was going to wait to post this until Gold closed below 900, just to make sure my hunch was on the right track. but then I figure, what the hell? it's just a blog. be aware though, this outlook really is predicated on Gold closing below 900 (preferably a couple days in a row) very soon (like within the next week). if that does not happen then this prediction will likely be abandoned or at least severely revised.)

IKN: Chariot Resources (CHD.to): A new NOBS report for sale

still trolling the net for free stock picks? sheesh...

why not give Otto a go? I told you to take this man's advice when DMM.to was trading at 1.50. I reiterated my recommendation to take Otto's advice when DMM.to hit 2.70. go take a look what that symbol's trading for now. then go spend $10 for Otto's newest NOBS report:

Chariot Resources (CHD.to)

Agriculture Prices vs Bond Prices -- point and figure chart

here is a longer term picture of the performance of the GSCI Agriculture sub-index relative to the price of 30 year T-Bonds.

DBA-USO Ratio

as with the UNG-USO ratio, this one may be nearing support also.

InfiniteYield Forex -- Joel just keeps getting lucky!

my friend Joel's InfiniteYield Forex Challenge is going pretty well. in December 2007 he opened an Oanda FXTrade account with $500. yesterday the net asset value of that account hit $3000.

while I often disagree with Joel about the direction of certain markets (for example, he's bearish on the Dollar, while I'm not) that does not matter a bit. his trading systems actually work because the systems are not based on personal opinion, but historically verifiable tendencies for markets to react certain ways under certain conditions.

for serious traders, InfiniteYield is a must read.


http://infiniteyieldforex.blogspot.com/

congratulations on your latest milestone, Joel.

U.S. Trade Balance and that $300 Billion Monetisation

America's Balance of Trade has been improving the last several months. according to the figures from TradingEconomics, the January 2009 shortfall amounted to only $36 billion, whereas the Jan 08 figure was $59.2. that's a narrowing of $23.2. well, a similar improvement over the rest of the year would come to around $275 billion in total improvement.

now, how much Treasury debt did the Company Store say they were planning to monetise again? $300 billion? that's not a bad little 'appetizer', as Otto of IKN and I were joking last night, but just wait till the U.S.A's Balance of Trade moves into a surplus.

UNG-USO Ratio

last fall I wrote a couple posts indicating that Natural Gas would out-perform Crude Oil (though admittedly I lost interest in the subject before the trend really got rolling). well, as you can see, the ratio of UNG to USO has backed off significantly that last few months. and today (of all days!) Natural Gas dropped hard, this after the commodity had been pumped pretty hard on the newswires recently.

I'm not sure what to make of the situation, and really I don't have a strong interest in the subject, but looking at UNG-USO I see the potential for good support not far below the current rate.

Bullidex Explained

new post at Smoking Securities. read it.

hey look what I wrote!

ever wondered what a Trend & Value Letter delivered as a PDF attachment each business morning actually looks like?

well, here is a report from February 10, 2009 converted into blog-postable images. click on each image to view full size.

some are better than others, and this one might be a little above average (hard to say), but this is the type of analysis I deliver to subscribers five days a week. in case you were wondering.

Canadian and Australian Trade Balances

a couple charts from http://www.tradingeconomics.com/





and here is a graph of the AUD/CAD exchange rate over the same period:

Global Grain Trade Map

here's a cool map from the Washington Post.


(click the image to view full size, or better yet check out the original page at WP.)

Crude Oil -- The Bull Clique Returns

I put Monday morning's newsletter up on Market Oracle. the subject was the Oil market. you can read the article by clicking here.

since I've just been an obscure blogger, who has just recently started putting promotional material on a well-trafficked site like Market Oracle, I'm not used to getting much feedback on my work. but some of the responses to this Oil article have been interesting. and there's one I got this morning that I probably need to respond to. the reader's comments are in italicized block quotes. my responses are in normal font.

Kyle:
Interesting article but I lean more toward the T. Boone Pickens forecast of higher oil prices by the end of 2009, not lower. I am a bit more conservative however, thinking a range of $60-70 is more probable; Boone favors $75-80 by the end of the year. Let's consider the following:

1. Oil producers will always have the capability to cut production more than "demand can be destroyed". However, I must admit this is no normal recession, although US gasoline demand actually rose 2.2% over the past month, which is encouraging. Taking the oil sands in Canada for example. Suncor Energy and others are simply slashing CAPEX projects until oil gets back above $65. End of discussion. Those cuts alone are removing daily oil production on the order of 500k bbls per day.

for the sake of argument, let us assume that the assertion made in the first sentence of point 1 is true. just because the producers have the capability to cut production it does not follow that they have the (collective) Will to do so. and even if a meaningful cut in global production is achieved, the previous supply overhang must be dealt with also. and in fact I believe that the market is dealing with that issue just fine at the moment.

regarding your price target of $60 to $70, I should point out that I am not predicting that the price won't go up to that level at some point this year. In the article I did write, "I respect the possibility of a good suckers' rally before the next wave of price destruction ensues."

then on the long-term chart of the December contract I included a few horizontal lines that I considered reasonable retracement targets to look for prior to the 'next wave of price destruction.' but reviewing my report I see that I neglected to explain those targets in words. looking at those lines again here I notice that those horizontal lines are clustered at the 60 to 70 Dollar range.



that retracement area was just a fuzzy guess, but there might be something to it. my projection is not that the market won't go up to that level, but that the level will not hold. this outlook is predicated on the understanding that commodities - and Oil in particular - have been in a 'bubble'. if this view is correct then my theory of asset bubbles that I have been developing indicates that this bubble has not fully deflated. I will more fully present this theory to the public later on, but for those interested, you can read my very initial thoughts on the subject in another report I had published at Market Oracle last month. (click here.)

The timing of the market is not something that I have any certainty at all about. when I started predicting a bear market in Oil last year I was a little early.


Monday, May 12, 2008
Oil's About Done...Maybe

...but I kept watching it and by later in the summer my conviction was pretty strong.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Norwegian Krone Update

readers may want to review those two posts. I don't consider either one to be especially brilliant, and really nothing in particular I do is brilliant, but they do give you an idea of the style of analysis I am prone to. I suppose you could call it more 'imagination-based' than 'fact-based'.

2. Shockingly, the latest oil production report out of Mexico's largest oil field (Cantarell) shows much worse decline rates than estimated. In fact if things are not reversed Mexico is in danger of becoming a net IMPORTER of oil by 2013. FACT: Mexico is currently the 3rd largest exporter of oil to the US. The news isn't any better out of Russia, the North Sea, or Alaska, where major declines are occurring. Brazil has discovered a new promising field in deep water but how viable do you think deep sea exploration/production will be at $40 oil? ANSWER: Not very.

great! but all these Facts bear no relevance whether the price of December Nymex Crude will fall to 30 bucks later this year. I just don't see the connection.

3. Much of the oil price decline has been driven by two factors (neither of which has anything to do with lower oil demand); surprising strength of the US dollar (USD) and unwinding of speculative positions by hedge funds. These latter two causes are about to "dry up" as the USD reaches a classic "double top" within a long-term secular decline and hedge funds conclude their "unwinding" process. Add in the start of summer driving season and you have a classic recipe for higher oil prices. OPEC cuts do not hurt either as they remove unneeded oil from the market. OPEC complance with their cuts is above 80%, noted to be the highest compliance rate ever.

or how about this instead: "much of the oil price rise was driven by two factors (neither of which has anything to do with lower oil supply); surprising weakness of the US Dollar (USD) and the building of speculative positions by hedge funds."

so I guess my point is that if you are implying the deflation now is somehow artificial, then it is just as logical to view the previous inflation as the same. which raises a question, if there was no 'real' basis for the inflation, then why should we now think that Oil now at $40 or $50 is somehow 'cheap'?

this is just a rhetorical point I'm making. the specific issues are whether the Big UnWind is over and whether the Dollar is due to slide lower for the remainder of eternity.

my current view is that the Big UnWind has not ended. there are a host of hunches underlying this view, but I don't have time to go through them all now. but I admit that this is something I could be wrong about. and since I don't have much of an agenda I reserve the liberty to extend and revise my remarks.

when I spotted the 'orthodox deflationary environment' on the horizon last summer I initially figured it would be in force till about the end of the year.

then in November I predicted that the S&P 500 would hit 666 this year:

Saturday, November 8, 2008
666 - S&P 500 and the 13 Year Cycle

but as the index made its approach to that number, I came to the conclusion that my wave count was off. I do not think that the decline from the beginning of the year to earlier this month was final leg or '5th Wave' decline of the bear market. I believe the current rally is the Wave 4 counter-trend move to be followed by Wave 5 culmination, though I see some possiblility that the 5th Wave will be non-confirming. the index might hold 666 or 700 in other words.

so you see that my outlooks evolve as circumstances develop. my vision for the Dollar though has changed little since I outlined the scenario you can read in the following two posts:

Monday, September 15, 2008
Gold and the Dollar -- an Historical Comparison

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Gold and Dollar -- Historical Comparison Update

so you say the Dollar is making a 'double top'. I am more inclined to view this as a bullish flat. to each his own. vamos a ver.

also I do not think that there is a one-way correlation between currency exchange rates and commodities prices. in fact my analysis has recently started to focus on the relative values of different commodities and how a structural shift in those relative values have the potential to affect the foreign exchange markets. I've alluded to this before, but in the latest daily newsletters I am firming up the theory.

4. Continual reports by the EIA, IEA, IMF, and the other "alphabet soup" of prognosticators are busily revising their weekly forecasts of global oil demand lower and lower. There is only problem with this scenario. THEIR FORECASTS ARE WORTHLESS!!! No one knows what oil demand will be in 2009, 2010, or even 2015 for that matter. Not OPEC. Not the IMF or any of the other world bodies. It will depend on future pricing, the speed of recovery in the global economy, geopolitical factors, and other issues beyond the control of these agencies. So if you are an oil trader "shorting" oil because of these demand forecasts you are an idiot.

I don't recall ever reading anything about Oil from any of the acronymic entities you mention. I don't read much at all frankly. guys like Ortega y Gasset and J.B. Say I like to revisit on occasion, but I spend most of my time smoking cigarettes and flipping through my chart books. Data First! thank you very much.

For the record, I'm not shorting Oil (or recommending that my clients short Oil) right now.

Anyway, these are just some of my observations. The oil market is and will remain volatile. But there is no doubt that supply destruction is occurring at a more rapid rate than demand destruction. And 6 billion Chinese and India residents will not be foresaking their automobiles for bicycles anytime soon.

Good luck.


Sincerely,
C. M.

thank you for the letter, sir. check back here on occasion for updates on my outlook. as I mentioned, my views are subject to change as the evidence changes. but I am more prone to consider factors such as market structure than assertions that the supply of petroleum just has to be drying up.

a note from Mitteleuropa

got an interesting email from a client this morning:

Hello from good old Europe Kyle,

and thank you for your notes on the Euro. True that most people here think that this crisis is american-made and they have real problems to admit that they were and are just as greedy as all Homo Sapiens on this planet.
But there is another disadvantage about the Euro nobody is talking about: Its the lack of solidarity among european nations. When it comes to saving nations like Ireland, Italy, Spain or Greece german politicians are primarily refusing to give money for them because they know well enough that electors are refusing the idea. I am living in Bavaria, one of the wealthier "Bundesländer" in Germany, but every year there is a debate among Bavarians (and that is the primary identity people here feel), if we should give more money to Berlin, Bremen or eastern Germany. Now guess how Bavarians feel about giving money to Greece.........
The Euro worked well in a growing economy when everybody was winning: We were transferring money to the Greek and Spaniards and they bought our BMWs. Thats over. The Euro will fall apart because it is not a Nations currency. The historic truth in this region here between Traunstein and Salzburg is that it belonged for centuries to the archbishops of Salzburg, not even to Bavaria. And it is a relatively new construct for people here to belong to Berlin (since 1918); apart from that they have no idea wre Brussels is. So why should they transferr their money there? You can find many regional examples like this all over Europe and people feel the same everywhere.

Regards A.

Volatility Index ($VIX)

the same reader who sent me the 'Very Impressive' email yesterday sent me a follow up email:

Kyle,

To me the most intriguing chart right now is the daily VIX, which has been locked in a symmetrical triangle since the beginning of the year.

What's interesting about it of course is the fact that it hasn't registered a new high or even trended upward in the face of a market making new lows practically every day.

If the long term breakout over the 45 level last fall was the first impulse wave up to 80, followed by the correction back to 45 recently, shouldn't there be another impulse wave coming?

JC

I confess that I don't pay much attention to the VIX itself. My main tool has been what I coined as the Panic Ratio, which is simply the VIX divided by the 3 Month Discount Rate. then there is another great ratio I happened upon a while back, the VIX divided by the S&P 500 Bullish Percent Index. this ratio was devised by Charles Amadeus, proprietor of the delightful blog 'Smoking Securities'. I think he calls it the 'Bullidex'. (yo Mr Amadeus! I just added SS to T&V's extremely exclusive 'Required Reading' list. if you ever put a link list up on yer new site I'd be honored to be included on it. I think I was on yer roll at yer old site, no?)

but this morning I'll take a quickish look at the plain vanilla VIX, the Panic Ratio and Mr Amadeus's Bullidex. in that order, I suppose.


sell stocks at trendline.


sell stocks at trendline.


draw yer own damn trendline.

so there you have it. as to why the VIX didn't move much on the latest decline... mostly because the latest decline had nothing to do with 'Fear' or 'Panic' but was simply a Deflation of Valuations. I've talked about this more in depth in the newsletter recently, I'm sure to approach the subject again sooner than later.

GDX-GLD Ratio

on this chart of GDX relative to GLD I have included some simple price targets that one should look for in the event that the ratio closes below the ascending trendlines.

while a conclusive break of Gold's uptrend hasn't yet arrived, Gold Mining Stocks appear rather weak at the moment. as you can see from this ratio, the miners seem to be leading the metal lower.

I've been wrong about Gold Stocks before, so don't forget to add a grain or two of salt. but then again, I've been right about this market a time or two in the past as well. in any case, I don't have a strong interest in mining stocks, except as they relate to the bullion markets.

"VERY IMPRESSIVE" -- a note from blog reader

found this message in my inbox this morning:

Kyle,

Just googled S&P bottom 666 a few minutes ago and found your November 2008 stock market prediction.

Great call, dude! Everyone watching the spoos at that moment took notice of how the price turned on a dime at that level (and hasn't looked back yet).

The market has been known to reverse upward in March, a la 2003. Maybe that's what happening now. As Carmela Soprano said, nothing lasts forever.

Thanks for the intelligent comments on your blog.

J.C.

Thank You Mr Blog Reader for the kind note. and Thank You Mr Google for making it all possible!

now you all Know that I write daily reports that you have to pay for now don't you? subscribe with the payment button at the top of the blog. I mean christ man, for a Dollar or so a day you'll get the chance to read the next Super-Duper Prediction from I here at Trend & Value. The price is comparable to donating to one those 'Feed the Children' Charities they push on TV.

...Your Dollar a day will allow Lucas, a poor emigrant of bourgeois upbringing, to purchase a 600ml bottle of beer and a shoe shine for his three year old Mephistos. act now and he might even be able to take his novia out for sushi.

or, if you are unable to support Lucas monetarily at this time, you can at least boost his ego and subscribe to his blog feed. that's free you Know. the FeedBurner link is over on the right...

Euro Interest Rate Derivatives

...notional value higher than US Dollar derivatives (as of June of last year anyway).


(from the BIS)

most of the Europeans I've encountered (in casual conversation anyway) are of the opinion that this recent 'crisis' was totally 'Made in America' and they themselves are but innocent victims. Well, I'll tell ya, if the Euro goes down it'll make our little sub-prime et al problems look like a water balloon fight at Carnaval.

I've waded through this whole economic episode in good cheer so far. but a 100 odd trillion swap pyramid? in a currency regime with absolutely no historical track record? what the fuck were you people thinking? what a mess. if not now, then later.

Timing Matters. right?

well maybe not... Ritholtz, he of the Big Box blog, seems intent on milking a call he made in 2006, that the Dow would go down to 6800 or something:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/03/dow-6500/

of the 69 comments to Barry's two sentence post, this one caught my eye:

bubba Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 2:39 pm

Barry,

I love your blog and read it religiously, but for the life of me I cannot understand why you keep trotting out your Dow 6800 call made 3 years ago. You were flat out WRONG, Barry. Your call was for 2006, the fact that we’re below that target now in 2009 is meaningless, as far as trading/investment thesis goes. By my calculations anybody that listened to you would have been down 14% in 2006 and 29% from the high in 2007, and most likely would have taken their loss and moved on. Sorry for the rant, but you do yourself a disservice if you keep harping on this 6800 call.

by contrast, we here at Trend & Value pride ourselves with specific, timely predictions. when I say 2009, I mean 2009.

a reader asks: what the heck is up with Oil?

Brother,
I called you last week and asked you to email me a brief about what is going on with oil and why it goes up when everything is else seems to go down.I don't understand speculation.We are purchasing a house in an area which revolves around the oil field.This town named Tioga has about 1,000 residents and is currently planning a 10 million dollar HESS office compex to be built and to go along which that a 380 unit housing complex which will consist of single family homes,senior living,apartments and townhomes.
Tioga is the oil capital of North Dakota,because it sits in the center of The Bakkan Formation.The Bakkan (if you have not looked into it) is huge oil reserve.It is said to be some of the sweetest crude oil of all time,but what lies under the Bakkan is the real prize and its called 3 Forks.
3 Forks is rock that holds oil and until recently they have not had the technology to drill into it.3 forks is said to be probably the greatest oil discovery in North America.It holds more oil then the whole Alaskan Reserve and they will start drilling into 3Forks this spring.
North Dakota is an Energy,working state. It is not too green and like Wyoming it uses its natural resouces to their full potential.Its unempoyment is the lowest in the nation and it is one out of only 4 states with a surplus and it has the largest out of those 4 states.
I guess what I am asking from you is to give you're opinion on oil speculation and mabye explain it and why its happening.Also I would like your opinion on possible realestate investments for this area. People around here say that when the rest of country's bubble burst thats when ours starts.If that is the case then I would like to take advantage the bubble and learn to buy and when to sell in the realestate market.
If you can get back to me that would be swell.


Thankyou,

Sister

okay, so what if it's my sister! these are very well considered questions. I'll address this in tomorrow's newsletter. the rest of you are welcome to leave your thoughts as a comment to this post. if you write something halfway worth while as a comment here I'll give you a free week of the Trend & Value Letter (if you are not a subscriber already).

Out of Office

going away for the weekend. see you all Monday morning.

(nice place to relax)

S&P 666 -- awfully close!

The Marketing Department demands that I milk this one, so here is the link (again) to the original post:

666 - S&P 500 and the 13 Year Cycle

and for those of you afraid to clickity-click here are the first couple lines of that post:

in 2002 the S&P 500 index bottomed at 777. in 2009 the index will hit 666. if not exactly, pretty close. below 700 anyway. I think.

below I have included my contact information. you Know, so the media Know where to find me...

Kyle Ledbetter Lucas
TrendandValue@gmail.com
612.284.5953 (U.S. line)
Platinum199 (Skype handle)

JPM -- Point and Figure Chart

yikes!

Proof there will be no recovery

the Duke of Cockshire and Clichés speaks in that Shining City on the Pill:

Gordon Brown addresses Congress

and click here for his speech writer.

GLD -- Volume by Price Chart (plus a special sales pitch)

as readers of the Trend & Value Letter well Know, I pay very close attention to the relationship between price and volume when analysing securities. below is a chart of GLD with 'Volume by Price' bars drawn horizontally from the left end of the chart.



the bigger the bar, the more volume traded at that price level. I've mentioned this situation with GLD in the newsletter (subscribe at top of blog!) recently, but I think blog readers should understand the importance too. a Public Service Announcement, if you will.

if GLD can hold this volume support level through the current period of weakness then super. this will be noted in the history books as a key period of 'accumulation'.

however, a violation of this big volume range from here would indicate that Gold has been in a broad period of 'distribution'.

Accumulation = 'good'; Distribution = 'bad'.

a fall below this level now (without an immediate rebound) should lead to an extended period where the price of Gold 'wanders the desert,' so to speak, in that range between the two big volume bars long enough to test the faith of even the most fervent of converts.

------------
a note about the newsletter: I've been writing this thing for a couple months now and I think I'm finally getting into a good groove with it. the subscriber base, while small, continues to grow each week. my only marketing has been this odd-ball weblog and the occasional kind word from the nice boys at IKN and Biiwii.

if you are looking for an honest perspective on the markets, consider giving me a shot. if you try the service and don't like it, then damn, yer out 28 bucks. but I think once you become more acquainted with my way of thinking you'll see good value not only in terms of the price I charge, but more importantly, in terms of the time and intellectual energy required on your end to appreciate it.

for my part the Letter has so far been a great intellectual experience, and I'm confident that the content will improve even more as the weeks and months go by. I'd like to share that experience with you. you Know, if you got a little extra cash.

Are you afraid of Bears?

Should you be?

EUR/AUD -- the dance continues

(click image to view full size)

for traders who play breakouts, this chart is a dream. initial downside target of around 1.90 sounds about right. I suppose it could up some too, though I would be more cautious playing the long side.

Australian Dollar bears now must be betting on a crisis with the Current Account. if one hits then yeah, AUD could very well decline somewhat more. but if it doesn't hit soon then the bears should start to back away.

in the newsletter, I think it was five, six weeks ago, I postulated that rather than buying currencies of countries with large trade surpluses - a strategy being hyped at the time in the mainstream press - a better idea would be to buy the currency of a country that has had a relatively large trade deficit with the expectation that as global trade slowed down those deficits would decline, and eventually that would lend support to the currency.

the two examples I gave for that were the Australian Dollar and the US Dollar. While USD has done pretty well since then, AUD hasn't really moved against a basket of the other major currencies.

I'll make a little prediction: one of these two will be the best performing major currency this year. and I think there is a good chance that whichever one does best, the other won't be too far behind in performance. I'm not suggesting exactly that the two will be moving together on a trend basis, but more that the individual trends of each will converge.

search of the day: when was the last time the s&p 500 at 700

when was the last time the s&p 500 at 700

according to my site traffic counter someone from Scotia Capital just arrived at Trend & Value via that search. musta had a little free time on his hands...

the post of mine that showed up on that search was one I wrote back on November 8 of last year:

666 - S&P 500 and the 13 Year Cycle

getting a lot more visits to that post recently. wonder why...

anyway, to answer the question it was in 1996.

Low Carbon Global Bath House

Globalist Warming heatin' back up.

this love letter from G. Brown, Archduke of Cockshire, is a trip.

The special relationship is going global

"in the cold war era we fought the growth of nuclear weapons" !

"In this new century, since the horrors visited on America in 2001, we have worked in partnership to defeat terrorism." !

"a high-growth, low-carbon recovery" !!

"a global new deal, whose impact can stretch from the villages of Africa to reforming the financial institutions of London and New York" -- not just the WPA but the WWPA.

My Mom's Backyard

a few pics of Winter Down East. not that I'm complaining about the extended Spring here in Quito, but things at the 45th Parallel don't look too bad either.

graph of silver value 30 years

someone searched for,

graph of silver value 30 years

even better, one going back to 1973:



that's from timingcharts.com -- good place to get charts of commodities futures.