Market comments for Jan. 27th

Sorry for not posting these past 4 days. I was in Las Vegas trying to help the economy. I didn't help it much, but I did help mine, if you know what I mean. :) Let me get now right to the news this morning. Initial Jobless Claims soared up this morning to 450K new Jobless Claims. This was not what markets expected. Expectations were for only 400K new Jobless Claims. Last week the number was 403K.

Also giving the economy a whack was Durable Goods Orders. They came in for Dec. at -2.5%. So much for the great Christmas everyone was touting in the media and that the Consumer was back. Expectations were for +1.5%.

The markets have hit their respective peaks. The Dow managed to hit and exceed 12,000 while the S&P 500 hit 1300. Many think we now are ready to take off to the upside and a new BULL MARKET. I think we are going to take off too, but not to the upside, but the DOWNSIDE. Here's the data on Gold I have been keeping track of. The first chart below is of the Daily Gold prices for all of 2010 to the close yesterday. You can see the speculative bubble is bursting there and the second chart is off the Dow/Gold ratio.



Also worth noting is the Baltic Dry Index charts below. If this isn't signaling a market decline and possibly a double dip recession, I don't know what is. The second chart compares the S&P 500 to the Baltic Dry Index. Both are on exponential Log Scale and you can see that the S&P is currently not tracking the real world commercial data of the Baltic Dry Index. That's because of speculation now in the stock market with Bernanke claiming he is doing it with QE2.