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Peter Brimelow
March 3, 2011, 2:21 a.m. EST
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Modern Portfolio Theory redux?
First Take "º
February's retail-sector haves and have-nots
By Peter Brimelow, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) "” Gold reaches a record high. Is it telling us something?
Gold closed $1437.70 on Wednesday, using the CME April contract as the measure, up $28.40 so far this week and breaking through significant technical barriers.
Over the weekend, Australia's The Privateer had growled: "Just as it has since early November 2010, the area between $1,400 and $1,425 is proving a firm "?ceiling' for gold."
The Gartman Letter was more direct on Tuesday: "Someone "¦ or something "¦ has kept a virtual lid on the gold market at or near $1,414-$1,416 for the past many months and has certainly been at work for the past two weeks making certain that gold does not push upward through that level."
Consequently the new, adjusted gold chart looks very exciting. Pring Research put out an early Weekly Infomovie Report on Wednesday morning, saying of the (for practical purposes identical to gold) SPDR Gold Trust ETF /quotes/comstock/13*!gld/quotes/nls/gld (GLD 138.15, -1.77, -1.26%) chart: "The break-out is likely to be a valid one. That's important because these consolidation formations are typically followed by price moves far in excess of that suggested by their size."
Columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady critiques the Fed Chairman's congressional testimony.
The Aden Forecast's Wednesday evening Weekly Update has swung entirely positive: "Now that gold is hitting new highs, it's still to be seen if this is really the start of an A rise or an extended C rise. In either case, it's very bullish."
(Last week the Aden Forecast was still entertaining the possibility that gold remained in the undesirable "D" decline phase.)
Can gold go further? MarketVane's Bullish Consensus appears to say yes. On Wednesday gold rose to a 2011 high of 80% but the previous night a LeMetropoleCafe correspondent pointed out that, prior to the 2008 crash, tops generally involved several days in the 90s. Mark Hulbert's HGNSI appeared to support this optimism. ( See Mark Hulbert's March 2 column. "” but after Wednesday's action, HGNSI jumped very dramatically, to 71.9% vs. a record high of 89.58%, which will certainly disturb contrarians.)
What is going on? Obviously, the Middle East and the oil squeeze have to be considered. But two (hopefully) longer-term factors also command attention.
News of a recent stunning acceleration in Chinese imports is spreading. ( See Feb. 7 column.) This week UBS published a report saying China imported 200 metric tonnes of gold in the first two months of this year, which suggests an astonishing and bullish restructuring of the physical market.
Possibly more important are signs of a dramatic slump in confidence in U.S. economic management. Symptomatic of this is the normally somewhat-deferential Gartman Letter.
Discussing Fed Chairman Bernanke's Tuesday Congressional testimony Dennis Gartman complained of "what we consider to have been one of the worst performances by an American central banker before a congressional delegation that we can remember "¦ but then again we've only a memory going back to the days of William McChesney Martin, so our pool from which to draw is limited."
"The Fed Chairman seemed all too willing to write off the current global price increases of food and energy as simply the result of exogenous market circumstances. "¦ We have heretofore been overt and very consistent defenders of the Fed and of Dr. Bernanke "¦ but the Fed chairman's denigration of the problems attendant to rising food and energy yesterday caught us off guard, as it apparently caught everyone else off guard also. It was within a few minutes of his discussion that gold prices soared. They should have. They responded properly and they responded well."
It's not just Middle Eastern turmoil that is alarmingly reminiscent of the late 1970s!
Peter Brimelow has been an editor at Barron's, Fortune and Forbes and is the author of "The Wall Street Gurus: How You Can Profit From Investment Newsletters."
Pent-up demand, warmer weather, a couple of holidays and a more optimistic take on the economy helped drive retail sales higher for many retailers in February, but there were some high-profile laggards.
12:16 p.m. Today12:16 p.m. March 3, 2011
"Peter Brimelow: What is gold's climb really telling us? http://on.mktw.net/igS7cH" 3:13 a.m. EST, March 3, 2011 from MKTWBrimelow
"Peter Brimelow: Modern Portfolio Theory redux? http://on.mktw.net/h8go9X" 3:53 a.m. EST, Feb. 28, 2011 from MKTWBrimelow
"Peter Brimelow: Decade's top performer is a hard-assets bull http://on.mktw.net/hdBaZm" 3:05 a.m. EST, Feb. 24, 2011 from MKTWBrimelow
"Peter Brimelow: Ruff likes precious metals...and Sarah Palin? http://on.mktw.net/ht7Z5L" 2:30 a.m. EST, Feb. 17, 2011 from MKTWBrimelow
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