While I remain cautious on stocks and the risk trade, the technical picture shows that the uptrend to be intact and the bulls should still be given the benefit of the doubt for now. At this point, any call for a correction is at best conjecture [as evidenced by the following 4 indicators]. Words: 399; Charts: 4

"A sluggish economy, political gridlock, tepid earnings, the European debt crisis, high gasoline prices..." I can't really argue with Barron's depiction of the current market environment yet, against all these seemingly negative conditions, the stock market keeps surging higher. Can it possibly continue, though?

"Do we really have a time machine and have reset to 2007 or have we in fact entered the uncharted territory of unsustainable, runaway trends the likes of which have never been observed in recorded history? Also, just how relevant is the Dow Industrials Index in all of this?"

Looking at the recent Gold Miners price action and crash-like conditions, I cannot hide my excitement. As we judge the recent cyclical bear market within the longer term secular uptrend, we can see that Gold Miners are becoming very attractive. Whether it is the technically oversold levels that only occur a handful of times over a generation, the rock bottom valuations on nominal or relative basis, or the extreme sentiment that the overall sector is going through, all of these indicators point to one conclusion: we are fast approaching a major buying opportunity. [I support that contention below with the use of 8 charts and a full explanation of each.] Words: 1133; Charts: 8

If similarities between the 5 major spikes in the price of gold since 2001 were applied to the 5th price spike (August, 2011) going forward it would not be unreasonable to expect a spike to $2,600 in June or July of this year and another spike - to somewhere between $4,700 and $5,050 - in January/February of 2015.

This infographic highlight changes in economic indicators, reports relevant news stories, reveals commodity and financial trends, provides technical analysis and looks at the recent price of gold and real interest rates with relevant charts.

On average the most energy intensive process in mining operations is comminution and with rising energy prices and decreasing ore grades, this is an area that smart producers are focusing on. Benefits of improving comminution efficiency include higher potential earnings, better overall environmental impact, and increased outputs as the very enlightening infographic below illustrates.

It’s that time again. The Dow surpassed its all-time high and the S&P 500 is not that far from the tops of 1553 on March 24, 2000 and 1576 on October 9, 2007. Just as in 2000 and 2007, the economic, valuation and political background does not support the budding euphoria. [Let us explain precisely why that is the case.] Words: 680

The mainstream financial press would like us to believe that because the S&P 500 and Dow 30 are at or near their record highs that it must mean we're nearing the end of the current bull market and, as such, now must be a terrible time to buy stocks. Let's not jump to any conclusions, though. Instead, let's do our own due diligence to find out. Hint: If you've been stuffing cash under the mattress since the last market crash, you might want to finally go deposit it in your brokerage account. Here's why... Words: 420

We had previously speculated that the 30-year bond rate would continue downward to around 2% based upon a number of very long-term charts. Short-term charts, however, are showing strong technical evidence that interest rates may be turning up in the long term. Words: 267; Charts: 2