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Eiffel tower patterns can be very important to your portfolio construction & management because, when you experience the left side of the tower, you often experience the right side as well which often results in declines of as much as 50% from the peak. Currently it would appear that three specific assets could well be forming such patterns.

I believe this sell-off is a good thing for the market - as the outcome will show us where fair value might be. I believe that we will see the market return to a more reasonable forward P/E of 13, sending SPY to $150.00 - or another 5 percent decline. [Let me explain further.]

Just the mere suggestion that this round of quantitative easing will eventually end if the economy improves is enough to severely rattle Wall Street. U.S. financial markets have become completely and totally addicted to easy money, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen when the Fed takes the "smack" away. When that day comes, will the largest bond bubble in the history of the world burst? Will interest rates rise dramatically? Will it throw the U.S. economy into another deep recession? Can the Fed fix this mess without it totally blowing up?

A recent Trim Tabs report claims that almost every single asset class in the world is overvalued yet, while there may be some areas that are frothy, to claim that almost every single asset class in the world is overvalued is a bit of a stretch. This article refutes these claims.

The overreach of the "War on Terror" and heavy-handed copyright laws lend the cover for any US agency to monitor and control your Internet activity. These, and myriad other laws, mean that your personal/business website can be seized at the drop of a hat under the flimsiest of pretexts. Fortunately, it is relatively easy and cheap to move your digital presence across borders where it can dwell in friendlier jurisdictions.

Jim Sinclair is as good a source of the market fundamentals as anybody out there. Some of his comments can be a bit confusing, though, but that usually is the result of his attempt to economize words. I don’t intend to be negative, but sometimes Jim leaves things vague enough that it can be interpreted in more than one way. Let’s take a look at some important comments that Jim has made recently.

Stocks are up. Bonds are expensive. Dollar cash is unlikely to preserve purchasing power in an environment of negative real rates. Diversifying to a basket of hard currencies might help to mitigate some of the risks out there. It clearly adds currency risk but in an environment where there may not be such a thing as a risk free asset, it might be a risk worth pursuing...

Precious metal miners operate in a large variety of countries and our interest in these mining companies on the one hand and country risk exposure on the other led us to compile a comprehensive list of jurisdictions of concern to precious metal investors....[numbering 47 in total. All 47 countries are ranked below].

Charts provide certainty, for they are absolute and the final word at the end of day, week, month, etc. There can be no dispute over a bar’s high, low and close, plus the volume, for whatever the time period under consideration. There is a high degree of logic within them and, while there can be differences of opinion over their interpretation, establishing a fixed set of parameters can mitigate most any potential dispute. So just what are the charts saying about the current trend in gold and silver? Let's take a look.

The Tokyo Nikkei Average rose +82% in just six months in a parabolic move that was doomed from the start. They almost always are. When a parabolic move breaks, as it did in May, the speed of the decline can be catastrophic and has fallen 22% to date. The downside expectation is for prices to return to the level of the basing pattern that preceded it. In this case between 8300 to 9100. That is not a prediction, just the level we at which we might expect to start looking for a tradable bottom.