Gold

In his 1919 poem, “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats wrote:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

Are Investors, analysts and traders acting like big babies? We think so. Even at its much easier-going mid-20s levels, the VIX is reporting that back to us. It’s absurd.

Correction: Yesterday we misstated the date of next week’s Federal Reserve FOMC meeting. It will be September 17^th, not the 18^th. We apologize for any confusion.

An important inflation reading released today showed U.S. import prices falling 1.8% in August as the cost of crude oil and a basket of other goods dropped. Import prices slid 0.9% in July.

As the U.S. dollar strengthened today, gold lost even more of its safe haven appeal and now appears to be strung out on the corner waiting for a big fix of inflation. If stable-to-lowering yields on U.S. bonds across all maturity dates are any indication, the wait is going to be a long one.

The biggest news of this first day of post-holiday, post-summer trading is the renewed strength in equities. All across the world, except Tokyo, stocks looked and acted muscular, and perhaps are bolting out of the late-summer gate for a sharp rise before the historically shaky (and contemplative) month of October.

It’s hard to guess what the Federal Reserve will make of today’s Labor Department employment figures. It’s not too hot, but it’s not too cold. It’s simply kind of lukewarm. However, it did show the unemployment rate dipped to 5.1% and that has to be reckoned with.

A Quiet Mutiny From Stern To Bow… Eyes Open Everyone

The trouble with hedges against inflation is that they need inflation. Sounds obvious, but the message doesn’t always get through to investors and traders.

While there is still plenty of room for crude oil to fall, and many reasons for it to do so, for the moment, it seems to have found its middle-ground pricing level.

Although the sector is still expanding, the pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector slowed in August to its weakest in more than two years, according to an industry report. It is going to be very hard to sort out the chicken-and-egg problems such as: What effect China is having? How much of a problem has a much stronger dollar become?

Yes, we know the old advice – Buy on the rumor, sell on the fact. But crude isn’t exactly moving on rumor, and there are surely a lot of facts floating around. Yet, up go prices.

Rumor has it that OPEC and other key oil players are going to get together and reverse their now long-withstanding strategy of low prices. No one is asking the question: “Why now?”