Trend Technician

No one factor is likely to drive broad trading decisions than inflation. As with so many other factors right now, there are fundamental indicators swinging in both directions when trying to make a call on inflation. The conventional wisdom has been that a recovery will mean inflation due to a policy of quantitative easing, and that if the green shoots aren’t really green, that we’ll have deflation. There are problems with both of these suggestions however.

The Problem with the Deflation Hypothesis

If you look at the CPI numbers you will be impressed with the year over year (yoy) deflation.  The recession has been biting us hard and we’ve been tightening our belts driving prices down.  That all sounds good except the data don’t seem to support that at all.  If you look at the 12 month CPI numbers for June 2009, you’ll see that other

than Transportation and Energy there has been no other sector that has experienced deflation.  Let’s be clear about what that means.  Despite all the panic going on, overall prices haven’t come in at all except for the collapse of oil prices and the disinterest in cars.  This would seem to suggest that once the economy gets moving again we’re going to have rampant inflation once all the money the government has printed gets moving.

The Problem with the Inflation Hypothesis

But of course things can’t be that simple.  On the flip side of all this is an important fact:  A tremendous amount of wealth was destroyed in the financial crisis.  While the numbers vary, there are suggestions that somewhere around 40% of the world’s wealth was destroyed by the financial crisis.   Imagine the impact of that destruction of wealth on the buying power of the world.  If people are not exercising the same purchasing power they did before, then all that money that the government is printing may never gain enough velocity to cause any real inflation.  Unless governments printed a lot of money, they’re going to have a hard time counteracting all that destruction of wealth.

Another Case for Technical Analysis

This leads me to the same old drum I’ve been beating all along.  In cases like this you have to resort to the technicals (e.g. this free video from INO.com, simply join their mailing list and you’ll get a fantastic resource for free).  Buy (or sell) and hold can be disasterous when applied at times of chaos like this.  You can be right in the long term and still go broke in the short term.  Thus I strongly suggest arming yourself with the tools to make decisions based on market psychology as well as other factors.  In addition, in times like this you can hedge your bets with what I call the the “Triple Call Technique.”

Photo Credit: Erik Charlton

Gold is either a really good or really bad investment right now, how do you tell which? When it comes to the fundamentals, the same simple questions is driving gold that’s driving all other issues right now: Are we going to have a recovery and inflation, or continued woes and deflation? This question is particularly important for gold which really has no other utility other than as an inflation hedge, or as a safety play during panic.

Because this one question of whether we’re going to have inflation or deflation drives pretty much all markets right now, how do we answer the question? The answer is: we don’t. The outcomes and time-frames are such a matter of conjecture that trying to decipher the truth is a fool’s errand. In times like this our real goal is to divine the psychology of the market. We don’t care so much whether there’s going to be inflation or deflation, as we care what the market thinks is going to happen.

Obviously if we’re trying to measure market sentiment, technical analysis is our friend. Let’s take a look at some video that I find compelling:

Gold Chart Analysis

While the section about energy fields is interesting, I find the identification of the head and shoulders pattern much more compelling. How easy is that to trade. If it breaks out to the upside around 1k, then you go long with a stop back inside the range. You would expect some significant run with that breakout as well.

To get a detailed snapshot of gold at the given time you can get a free trend analysis here:

Spot Price of Gold

Just enter your email and name and you’ll get a detailed analysis of gold prices, completely up to date and completely free. I usually build my charts on the spot price of gold, even though I often trade using the ETFs or another vehicle. Whatever derivatives I may use, they will be driven by the spot price so that’s where I start my analysis. These charts can help make sure you don’t miss out on a big swing.