Graphite here.
Although it’s easy for this kind of contrarianism to turn into unhelpful navel gazing, on Friday the level of despondency seemed to hit a new high (or is it low?) on the bear blogs. Posts and message boards are chock full of buzz about perpetual asset inflation powered by the Fed’s magical money machine [...]

(First published 3.3.10, 1:27PM EST)
I’ve noticed lately how well the 60-min RSI (relative strength index — a measure of oomph in price movement) has been doing, so today I decided to quantify it. The result is simply spectacular, even with a mechanical buy/sell decision that always had you in the market either long or short.
Here is [...]

Prophet.net
Likely at least a bit more downside here, maybe even a trend lower all day to 1085. Adjust those stops though! This move now qualifies as complete, so we could snap up at any time.

When the short-term gets hazy, remember the big picture.
The drop so far (about 6% in 12 days on a closing basis, 9% in 13 days intraday):

Source: Prophet.net
Here are the conditions I am watching: RSI on the daily scale is now oversold. However, DSI bullishness has dropped from near 90% to the 30s, which still leaves a [...]

I was extremely, almost uncomfortably short for the last couple of weeks, and with the Dow down 175 a few minutes ago, I covered my stock futures shorts and bought a few contracts to hedge up my long-term puts. It’s looking very good for the shorts — dollar up across the board, bond spreads wider, [...]

Here’s the latest shot of the 5-day trailing average put:call (from indexindicators.com):

-
This kind of complacency is extremely rare and pretty much dooms the stock market from making any more headway without a correction.

Both are overbought on flagging momentum. Note the high and downsloping RSI (Relative Strength Index) since yesterday:
Source: Prophet.net
-
I’ve been playing around with Tim Knight’s creation, Prophet Charts, and I have to hand it to him — this is the best assembly of technical analysis tools that I’ve seen.  Stockcharts.com is still pretty good for a [...]

It looks like we’re setting up for another reflation impulse in the short-term, though with the dollar’s decline solidly broken, the risk trade is on borrowed time.
Here’s a little doodle on a 2-week gold chart:

Source: Interactive Brokers
This chart of GLD shows a longer-term view, where you can see the RSI forming a possible rounded bottom:

Source: [...]

As of early this AM, we have a trendline break on the hourly chart. Still none on the daily or monthly, but as we saw last week after a similar trendline break, this market is capable of cracking with little warning. This is a 1-month view of February gold futures. Last night’s high is the [...]

Markets have rebounded feebly from their early November bottom, with speculative interest focused in fewer sectors than in earlier risk binges. The hot money is now concentrated in big-cap US stocks over small-caps, and in gold over silver, reflecting a shift in preference for quality over junk.
With upside momentum taking a breather, we’re in another [...]