Bonds are a key indicator of the health of the risk trade. So long as treasuries are shunned and junk is bid, it is likely that stocks and the commodity complex hold up. This week, long-dated Treasuries have gained a couple more points as junk bonds continued to lose their mojo:

Source: google finance
Here are the [...]

The widener play from last week has worked well so far.
TLT (20-30 year treasury bond ETF) vs. JNK (junk bond ETF):

Source: yahoo! finance
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10-year notes are also doing well (IEF, the 7-10 year note ETF is up 1.25%), but the much maligned (and deservedly so) long bond is up 100% more.

Everyone loves junk bonds and hates Treasury bonds. That’s an opportunity:

Source: Yahoo Finance
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Hat tip to EWI’s Financial Forecast (just released) for reminding me to check on this chart.

Here’s a roundup of the usual markets, plus a look at grains. This topping process is frustrating, but the action remains encouraging for those waiting to profit from a resumption of the deflation trade. Even as some stock indexes make new highs, they have been revealing their weakness with low volume and advance/decline ratios. The [...]

We reached a point this week where almost all bears turned short-term bullish at the very least, if they didn’t swear off shorting altogether. Hordes of hobby bears were crushed over the last three weeks, and even hard core bears from before 2008 seemed to adjust their wave 2 targets upward as high as SPX [...]

Take a look at this spike in the long bond yield in late 1979 and early 1980 (charts from Yahoo! Finance):

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It must have been a real shocker at the time, and when yields returned to near pre-spike levels, it must have seemed as though the event were an anomaly. Well, it was part of a [...]

(thanks again to zerohedge for finding this video)
I remember when I first discovered a speech by Ron Paul back in boom-time 2005, and was shocked that a Congressman was so eloquently warning of the dangers of fractional reserve lending, the Federal Reserve system, and welfare/warfare deficit spending. It was the first time that I could [...]

Today’s action (equity and commodity sell-offs through key levels, major bond and dollar rallies) confirms once again that the dollar is still king and that deflation is the name of the game.
The action since March can be summed up as (1) a dead-cat bounce from oversold conditions in equities, (2) a replay of early 2008’s [...]

US equities, the VIX, oil and copper are bucking against price levels associated with multiple peaks and troughs over the last month. The levels are as follows:
July copper: resistance at $2.32 - 2.35
August oil: resistance at $70 - 71 (BTW, I have been stopped out here and am on the sidelines)
NASDAQ futures (NQ): resistance at [...]

Trends reverse asset class by asset class. Here’s where the reflation trade stands about two weeks past its possible peak:
Gold and silver: Nice, clear tops and solid sell-offs. I’m pretty confident about those tops holding, since sentiment readings got so high there. Decent profits are in hand, and I am out of this market as [...]