And just like that, it never happened!The S&P 500 just broke to a new record high...Continue...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Jan 9, 2020January 3, 2020The efforts of the Federal Reserve to inject extra liquidity into the banking system over the past 2 months have helped to fuel the year-end (2019) rally.Questions remain about how long the Fed may choose to keep up that effort, and whether the Fed has enough ink in the printing presses to overcome other market forces. And with...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Jan 15, 2020January 9, 2020The major averages are ignoring missile strikes, oil market turmoil, and excessively bullish sentiment, keeping prices marching higher in 2020.But we have a major bearish divergence now in the VIX Index, which is NOT making lower lows to confirm those higher price highs.The VIX Index made its lowest closing low for this price u...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Oct 22, 2019October 17, 2019Short-term interest rates have been falling, pushing the Federal Reserve to cut its own Fed Funds rate target.This week’s chart says that there is still a lot further for rates to fall. I get a lot of data out of the CFTC’s weekly Commitment of Traders (COT) Report, and I review the relevant insights every Friday i...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Sep 2, 2019August 30, 2019We currently have trade wars, presidential tweets, inversions in the yield curve, slowing earnings growth, decreasing corporate share buy-backs, and all manner of other problems affecting the stock market.And yet the long-term message from crude oil prices says that the stock market ought to continue trending upward into 2021.It...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Sep 15, 2019September 12, 2019President Trump has been articulating his wish on Twitter and elsewhere that the U.S. have interest rates as low as other countries.That’s an understandable wish, as no one likes to pay more than the other guy is paying for something.In economics there are often unintended side effects, and that is what this week&rsquo...Read More

As the broad market continues to ride its best year-to-date performance in more than two decades, investors who haven't been paying close attention may be surprised to discover that 2019 has also been a stellar year for gold. While gold isn't having quite the historic run that we're seeing in equities so far this year, it's not for lack of performance - metal prices simply surged higher faster,...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Sep 24, 2019September 19, 2019Back on August 22, I wrote here about how the spread between the 10-year T-Note yield and the 3-month T-Bill yield gives us a leading indication that is relevant for small cap relative performance.This time, I look at the "yield curve" in a different way, via the spread between 10-year and 2-year yields.The 10-year to 3-mont...Read More

Reports that undocumented immigrants are protesting in the Charles de Gaulle Airport in #Paris right now and won't let people board their flights until they meet and talk Continue...Read More

Silver looks considerably weaker than gold, although that is normal at this stage in the cycle. It is still considered likely that it is forming a Double Bottom with its lows of late 2015, and if so then the support at those lows should hold.On silver's 1-year chart it still looks like it is moving to complete a Cup & Handle base, because the pattern roughly parallels the pattern completing in...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted May 27, 2019May 23, 2019The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) measures shipping rates on a type of cargo ship which hauls “dry” cargo, such as iron ore, coal, etc. as opposed to tankers hauling oil, or container ships hauling big steel boxes of stuff. The BDI has long been considered as an important leading economic indicator, because if steel companies...Read More

The gold bulls are back. The price for the metal just breached $1,400 a troy ounce, its highest level since 2013. The move opens the possibility that investor appetite for the metal is rising. If we are indeed entering a major bull market for the metal then savvy investors should consider buying smaller cap gold mining stocks rather than either the metal itself or the larger miners. The easiest...Read More

Barrick Gold Corp. (GOLD - Get Report) said Monday it has been awarded nearly $6 billion in damages related to a 2011 arbitration case involving it and a partner being denied a mining lease in Pakistan. Toronto-based Barrick announced on Monday that the World Bank International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID, has awarded $5.8 billion to Tethyan Copper Company Pty L...Read More

Anyone bullish on precious metals should consider silver instead of gold. The white metal tends to see far more volatility, which is an advantage for traders in an up-trending market. Plus, silver prices are still playing catch-up with gold based on historical price analysis. To profit from the phenomenon, investors should consider buying the iShares Silver Trust (SLV - Get Report) exchange-tr...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Aug 4, 2019August 1, 2019Quietness is a sign of trader complacency, and thus of a topping condition for prices.Quietness manifests itself in a variety of ways, and can be measured also in a bunch of different ways.Most often, chartists will use Average True Range (ATR) to look at what prices are doing.This week’s chart was featured in a recent issu...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Feb 6, 2020January 31, 2020The primary driver of stock prices is supposedly earnings, right?So how is it that earnings as a percentage of GDP have been falling since a peak in late 2014, and yet the major averages like the DJIA and SP500 are up 60% since then?This week’s chart looks at some data which is buried deep within the Bureau of Economic An...Read More

Abby was scheduleded to give the keynote speech at a conference at Georgia Southern Univeristy. She discovered that in order to speak publicly at a Georgia college she had to sign a pledge of allegiance not to Continue...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Feb 24, 2020Febuary 20, 2020We had an inverted yield curve in 2019, and yet the planet did not tumble off its axis.The sky did not fall.So does that mean an inverted yield curve is not really a problem?In a word, NO!What the casual armchair economists do not realize about the yield curve is that the effects on the economy of changes in yields are delayed...Read More

McClellan Financial Publications, IncPosted Mar 4, 2020Febuary 28, 2020The Federal Reserve decided in September 2019 that it would start to insert itself into the market for “repurchase agreements”, or repos.The reasons why the Fed honchos decided that they needed to do that will be an interesting subject for future historians.For current market historians, the important point about th...Read More

The big rally in palladium prices still has room to run. Double-digit returns are likely in store over the next few months. Increased interest in the metal from investors, as well as a relatively tight supply-demand balance, should propel prices even higher over the next half-year. Like gold, palladium is considered a precious metal, but it is overwhelmingly used for industrial purposes. Two...Read More